


The Cat Came Back

by BlackCatula



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cats, Horror, Multiracial Character, Mystery, Native American Character(s), Pacific Northwest, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-27 10:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 42,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6280582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCatula/pseuds/BlackCatula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Sing along if you remember the tune...]</p><p>Maeva Giroux has some troubles of her own<br/>She met a feral cat out in the woods alone<br/>Crawlin' from the wreckage of a fallen balloon<br/>The Cat said "Goodbye, but I'll see you soon"</p><p>Now listen real close as you shut your eyes tight<br/>There's demons in the house and whispers in the night<br/>"Get out of my house" is what the Cat said<br/>But Maeva replied "No, you get out instead"</p><p>The mystery thickens almost every single day<br/>Better solve it quickly, there's a windstorm on the way<br/>Maeva's pretty young but she knows quite well<br/>"Ancient Indian Curses" are a load of bull</p><p>And the Cat came back the very next day<br/>The Cat came back, they thought he was a goner but<br/>The Cat came back and just wouldn't stay away...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. If A Balloon Falls In The Forest...

She was sleeping in a tree when it happened.

Of all the places she could have logically been sleeping at that moment, maybe a tree wasn't the most comfortable, or the most luxurious, and it certainly couldn't have been the safest, but it was where she was when it happened, and there was nothing she could do about it now but embrace this incoming turn of events, paralyzed in wide-eyed fascination.

Gracefully, almost silently, a hot air balloon was drifting its way downward from the thin cover of the single cloud it had been hiding behind all morning, now on course to flutter its way right down into the bog below. The sound of nylon flapping in the vague midday breeze was what had stirred her from her nap. Not because it was particularly loud, but skyward flapping nylon was a very unusual noise to be heard out in the middle of the woods, and it had triggered her dormant curiosity.

Maeva had never seen a hot air balloon up close before. In her mind, she could only picture them as she could picture the stars - tiny, distant, lovely particles in the sky that she'd never be able to touch or hear or smell, but whose aesthetic beauty captivated her nonetheless. This time, however, the balloon was fluttering down only just beyond the treeline, and as a result, there were a number of new facts she learned about hot air balloons very quickly.

The first fact was that hot air balloons are BIG.

The entire collapsing mess was much taller than the tree she was nestled in, and it wasn't even inflated to full size anymore. In fact, that seemed to be why it was descending so fast. The shape was decomposing, the fiery fuel was depleted, and the wind was knocking it out of balance.

As it sailed its way over the stark, autumn treetops, Maeva quickly snapped to her senses and realized she ought to be either following it or filming it, on the off chance this wasn't all just a dream. She tucked her sketchbook and pencils into her backpack and zipped it tight, then wrapped herself around the branch she'd been napping on, rolled her body around and underneath it, then dropped the few feet to the ground below.

The loud, thick schmuck of hiking boots hitting mud and leaved echoed loudly in her head, definitely louder than a dream would allow. This was definitely real. Probably. She quickly rose up to full height and began hopping her way through the bog after the balloon, praying she wouldn't slip.

How long had she even been asleep? Couldn't have been that long. The sun was still high in the sky, meaning the afternoon was still young, and her stomach still wasn't rumbling yet...what more accurate clock could you ever judge by than that? And, by those measures, it meant Dad would still be out painting houses, and Mom was either tinkering with a new recipe or snoozing on the couch, so it was highly unlikely that anyone else had caught sight of the balloon yet. Maeva would get first dibs on whatever she might find there…

Using the barren trees for balance as she skated her way through the mud, she regained sight of the balloon's carriage just as it touched down, the massive envelope above getting stuck on the branches and trunks, draping itself out like a sad blanket fort. The wicker carriage hit the mud with a squelchy plop, then disappeared as more balloon slumped down on top of it. The flame that was supposed to be carrying the balloon had definitely died out, but Maeva knew better than to sidle up to it just yet, in case burning was still somewhere on the itinerary.

Moments later, everything finally arrived at a complete stop, the nylon fabric coming to rest in huge wrinkles and lumps where the saplings and stumps poked up from beneath. Maeva held her ground a few meters away, hand gripping the snapped branch of an alder tree on the edge of the clearing.

The whole thing was a solid, faded red, like the kind of red you'd have used to paint the town with back in the '80s, but had been left to sit in the garage for too long and now wouldn't even be fit to paint an outhouse. The stitching had torn apart all over its body, and its frame had decompiled into a formless flop. It almost looked as though it had been shot out of the sky.

...and now what? What was supposed to happen now that a massive hot air balloon had fallen out of the sky and landed in her back yard? It was exciting when it was doing something, but now there was no protocol to follow, no game plan for what needed to be done next. Should she tell someone? Should she be recording this? Maybe since it wasn't even doing anything, she should do the same and just ignore it?

She wanted to touch it.

There certainly didn't seem to be any immediate danger. There were no other balloons in the sky searchlighting for this one. No breaking news radio broadcasts. No sudden reveal of a flashy magician throwing back the blanket to the sound of rampant applause. Everything was just...normal again.

Too normal, even. Clouds skirted the horizon, promising rain later. Some birds that hadn't migrated yet were still screaming at one another in the trees. The entire clearing smelled soggy and green, same as a bog always does. The downed balloon was the only thing out of place at all, and now that it wasn't falling anymore, it was actually kind of boring.

Maeva hadn't even realized she'd been tiptoeing closer toward it. Her mind still registered that she was safely standing at the edge of the clearing, but her legs had switched off their connection to the brain and were now carrying her automatically toward the wreckage. She'd never quite figured out how or where her body had picked up a trick like that.

Standing within arm's reach now, she wasn't even sure what she'd expected to find up close. Had someone been piloting it? If it wasn't moving now, did that mean there was a corpse underneath the fabric? Maybe they parachuted out earlier?

Well none of these questions will get answered if I don't lift it and find out, she rationalized.

The words weren't even finished forming in her mind before her hand began stretching out. She tensed up, tried to freeze her fingers in place, but apparently her body wasn't even listening anymore. The switches were off, and sheer Curiosity was driving everything now.

Her index finger brushed against it, running along the smooth nylon, taking in the texture as if it were braille, reading it's entire life story through touch alone. It was still warm, but quickly fading out in the chilly November air. Wet where the mud had splashed up from impact. The texture made her think of very thick stockings. She could feel the edge of the basket further down beneath. A square shape big enough for a person twice her size to stand in, that made crackling noises when she squeezed.

Better snap some pics real quick, she thought, reaching into her fleece pullover for her pocket camera. Who's gonna believe me if I don't?

The ballonward hand bumped against something as she fished the camera hand out. No, wait. The other way around. Something bumped against her hand.

Her eyes darted back down to look at her fingers, praying for anything but spiders. Something beneath the nylon had fallen against her hand. Or maybe pushed...? She drew her hand back, readied the camera, and slowly groped around for an edge in the nylon she could peel back. She swore she could still hear the basket crackling by itself.

She hit the record button.

Pulling up slowly, tenuously balanced in the mud, Maeva held her breath. The basket was angled in such a way that the open side was pointed away from her, so she wouldn't be able to see what was inside when the top came off. She hoped it was only a stick, or a part of the basket that had broken off, or that maybe she had just imagined it altogether.

When she could see the lip around the top of the basket, she quickly threw the nylon the rest of the way, uncovering it all. She wanted to slowly lean over the edge with the camera and peek bit by bit, but curiosity was already driving her free hand. And the moment she set it down on the lip of the basket, something sharp smacked against it.

She yelped and yanked her hand back, pulling the whole basket with her as she lost her footing in the mud and fell backwards, landing squarely on her bottom with a splat. But her immediate instinct was to make sure the camera was still in hand, secured and pointed at the basket.

And from that basket emerged a cat.

It was unusually husky, too big to be a house cat, and its tabby fur was thick and bristly, but not in an unkempt way. Black stripes ran down its spine and sides, over a base coat that shifted between a drab dusty gray and the color of toasted marshmallows.

When it caught sight of Maeva, it puffed out its chest and focused on her intently, pupils wide and surrounded by a smoky jade color around the edges. Forgetting for a moment that her hand was currently caked in muck, she instinctively reached out to it in the traditional cat-greeting gesture.

The cat regarded her hand, then looked back up at her indignantly, as if to say, in that most haughty and condescending male voice all cats would use if they could speak, "No."

And then, the cat, in a most haughty and condescending male voice, spoke.

"No."

And with that, it turned right around, hopped over the wrecked balloon, and disappeared deeper into the woods.

Silently stunned, still not entirely sure her senses had just experienced what they were reporting they had, Maeva remained seated in the mud for a few moments longer before replying, out loud, to the cat that already left the premises, "...why not?"

She shook her head as Curiosity finally released its grip, allowing her to take control of her own limbs once more. She turned the camera off, stuffed it back in her pocket, and stood up, clearing away the mud clinging to the backside of her jeans. She glanced off in the direction the cat had taken, then down at the balloon, then off in the opposite direction back toward the house. Someone probably ought to be made aware of this…

...but maybe she'd keep the part about the cat to herself. For now, at least. In case it ever came back…

As if on cue, the breeze picked up ominously, and the distant, looming clouds promised a storm to come.


	2. Uncle Joe The Truck-Stucker

"Psh, I ain't afraid of no storm...".

In every movie or television show Maeva had ever watched, a big storm was always forecasted as some sort of mini-armageddon, fueled mostly by the panic of humans. Storms were always touted as wild, untameable maelstroms that blackened out the sky, drops of rain shooting down from heaven as if from some firing squad of angels, flanked by monstrous explosions that seared the air in two and rocked the earth all the way down to the very roots of the trees. Storms were feared and revered like World Wars, each one equipped with running meters on how much money it would cost to fix whatever human properties were broken in their wake. Pure and absolute chaos, each one of them.

Or at least that's what every American movie said.

Out here in the sticks of lower Canada though, most storms were only about as scary as the big bad wolf against a house made of bricks. Not that Maeva's house was made of bricks - it actually WAS made of sticks, the big fat kind called "logs" - the point is, stick country storms were all huff and puff, always getting stuck on the mountains that bunched up between the ocean and the pocket of countryside that Maeva knew as home. The worst a storm could do was knock down big branches, or send your lawn gnome on a pilgrimage to your neighbor's yard.

"Yup, like I always say," Uncle Joe explained, in his that dusty bumpkin drawl of his, as he surveyed the fat grey clouds out on the edge of the horizon. "You can beat out any storm, long as you got just three things: a heavy jacket, a pile a'batteries, and somethin' to write on."

Maeva nodded politely and continued doodling in her sketchbook. Listening to his spiel was only a formality at this point, it was the same speech he went through every single time a storm came around, and she'd already committed the entire thing to memory. Uncle Joe, a beanpole redneck of a man well into his forties, wasn't known for reinventing the wheel, especially when the wheel worked so fine the way it was.

"Most people just don't realize," she mouthed as he spoke. "Long as you got somethin' to keep your brain busy, you can just hunker down in your heavy jacket, click on a flashlight, do some crosswords, and you'll make it through fine. You just gotta be prepared, stop worryin' s'much about every little thing, and let Jesus handle the big stuff!"

Wise words coming from the joker who just trusted Jesus to carry his tractor through the mud without getting it stuck, she snickered to herself.

"Now c'mon and help me get this tractor outta the mud!" he added, holding out a hand.

She looked up from her place in the folding lawn chair, lowering her sketchbook just enough to give him an exasperated look. Logically, there was no way it should have gotten stuck the way it did, but Uncle Joe had some kind of inexplicable knack for everyday disasters like this. Three times already this year he'd driven the compact tractor all the way down the highway out to Maeva's house, and somehow ended up driving it right out into the bog. Maeva blamed it on the fact that he staunchly refused to ever buy a new one.

"Ummm," she replied, now looking back down at her baggy T-shirt and sweats combo. "I'm not really dressed for the task at the moment...".

Uncle Joe snorted, then spit over his shoulder. "Worried you'll get all dirty? Well ya got a washin' machine, don'tcha?"

Maeva frowned. This was her favorite relaxing shirt, the tie-dye one with the hilarious blue-footed birds that sat at chest level and made people chuckle to themselves when they saw it. It was an old one of Mom's, one of the very few shirts that actually fit right since she'd started growth spurting. She opened her mouth to protest, but found herself cut off.

"Don't worry about it, Maeva," Dad said, brushing away Uncle Joe's hand as he pulled up into the conversation. "I'll take this one."

Right, she sighed to herself. Should have known Dad would just do it himself...

She knew he didn't mean anything by it. It wasn't that Dad thought she COULDN'T do it, he just preferred to harbor the "you want it done right, do it yourself" mentality. He seemed to hold the idea that there was always a Right Way to do things, though he'd never admit it. He'd sugar coat it, tell you he was doing it to "provide for his family", or to "be a good father", among other stock phrases Dads often resort to when they want something Done Right, but not in a mean way.

There were times Maeva secretly suspected it was because he thought she'd screw it up. To be fair, she HAD grown quite a lot this year, into a lanky, monkey-armed teenager, and there had been times when her limbs just didn't agree with her brain's directions, usually resulting in falling on her butt or smashing her fingers in a drawer. So Dad had eventually just started offering to do things for her instead, maybe out of pity, or disappointment, or just plain old impatience. Whatever the case, she'd found it much easier to get out of doing work these days, simply by just waiting for Dad to do it himself.

Uncle Joe was of a different breed, though. He was the type who insisted everyone pitch in and lend a hand, and he'd make sure everyone had a task to do, even if he had to make one up. And he would be the one to make sure you didn't get dinner until you'd finished your share of the work. "No worky, no eaty," was his slogan of choice. Even if you didn't know how to do the job, he expected you to learn it, because "young'uns need to respect whoever is in their authority".

Clearly, that ethic had no power here.

"So, you let Jesus take care of your tractor again?" Dad asked with a snort, stepping up to survey the scene.

"Nooooo," Joe replied, stretching the word out. "I've explained this before, it's not about Jesus doin' the work, it's about lettin' Him WORRY for you. You just do your best, pray that it's blessed, and Jesus takes care of the rest."

Ooh, that's a keeper, Maeva thought, stowing the quote away for later. She was live-drawing a comic of the tractor debacle, and having trouble deciding which of the numerous Uncle Joe-isms would make the most absurd punchline to really capture the moment.

"You should have asked Jesus to take the wheel instead," Dad joked, rather snidely.

"Don't test the Lord," Joe warned, rather sternly. "He don't like it when you ask him to sweat the small stuff. You save him for big emergencies only."

"This is not an emergency?"

"Nah, this happens, what, once a month now?"

Dad paused, then said, with index finger raised, "...you have a point there."

In the past, Uncle Joe had only gotten stuck because the bin he'd added to the back of the tractor was carrying too much weight and he couldn't get through the muck fast enough. This time though, it was because Dad had asked him to drive it out to the bog, in hopes they might be able to hitch up the fallen hot air balloon and pull it out, at least to some place more accessible, before calling the county office to take care of the rest. Why Dad had chosen to call on Uncle Joe of all people was entirely beyond Maeva's comprehension.

"A'right then, you get behind and push, let's try 'er one more time...". Joe wiped the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve and straddled the tractor seat again. He was probably the only person Maeva had ever met who could work up a sweat in the November evening air.

"Ready? Here we go!"

The tractor roared to life, and Dad heaved from behind, his thick steel-toed boots sliding behind him in the muck. Joe gunned the motor, tapping on the accelerator again, and again, and once more, holding it down until the wheels started flinging mud. Dad finally deflated and collapsed against the back of the tractor, holding up a hand in defeat. Joe nodded and killed the engine.

"You know, this would be so much easier if you just drove the truck over here instead of the tractor, like I always tell you to..." Dad said between breaths.

"What, and get IT stuck in the mud too?" Joe huffed indignantly. "We're into the cold months now, I can't afford to get my truck stuck in the muck. Why'd y'think I always drove the tractor out here in the fall?"

"But you could carry so much more in the bed of your truck," came the exasperated reply. "It's just so much more logical that way, Joe."

"Says you. My way's my way, and you gotta respect that."

Dad just shook his head and sighed. "Well, you're stuck here until the mud dries out, then. Probably won't be until after the storm passes through."

"Aw, ya think so?" Joe rubbed his chin and once more gazed uncertainly out toward the gathering clouds. "...well, shoot. I can't be havin' that, I was s'posed to get back home to Nash with some firewood tonight. Can't leave that boy alone for too long or he gets into trouble, y'know?"

Dad grunted in agreement. He had never been fond of Joe's son for a long list of reasons, but especially not since the time he'd "borrowed" Dad's truck and tried to drive it all the way down their winding dirt driveway, BACKWARDS, just to prove he was getting better at driving in reverse. He might have even proven his point too, if he hadn't rammed the truck straight into the mailbox right at the end.

"Toss me your keys, wouldja?"

"...what?"

Joe held out his hand expectantly, leaning against the driver's side door of Dad's truck. "C'mon, let's get this sucker towed already."

"...Joe." Never had Maeva heard her Uncle's name spoken in a more dry, brittle, and downright achey way than that which her Dad had just managed to pronounce it.

"C'mon, Jean." Never had Maeva heard her Dad's name spoken in a more bland, mashed-potato, and downright Texas way than that which her Uncle had just managed to pronounce it.

"No, I don't want you to stuck my truck too, you truck-stucker," Dad said, a cheeky smile slowly forming on his lips.

"Hey now," Joe pointed a finger at him. "I know what you're doin' there, and that ain't proper language. One'a these days you're gonna slip up 'n say somethin' regrettable in front of your daughter."

"I'm more likely to say something regrettable than him," Maeva replied under her breath with a suppressed giggle.

"She is fourteen now, she can deal with it if I do," Dad countered, brushing Uncle Joe away. "And I'm still not letting you stuck the truck."

Seemingly defeated, Uncle Joe put his hands on his hips and decided, for once, to accept his loss with grace. He nodded solemnly, and took a deep breath. He must have caught scent of something enticing though, because he immediately perked up, sniffing the air as he turned his gaze elsewhere, trying to identify the aroma. Slowly, he half-smiled.

"Well, alright then, don't wanna make a scene out of it I guess," he said, a touch of sly smugness curling around the creases of his tanned visage. "Smells like dinner's gettin' started anyway. Who knows, maybe a little food in your belly will change your mind!"

"Maybe I'll--wait, Kel's already cooking dinner?" For a moment, Dad's expression went stark with worry, then settled again. Mom had never been known for using conventional recipes whenever she got the wild urge to actually cook something, and Dad seemed to be the only one in the family who took issue with that. The rest of them operated under the assumption that food was food, and should be treated as such, regardless of condition or color or creed.

For a second, Maeva wondered if she had inherited that mentality from Uncle Joe, because he suddenly seemed very invested in the imminent prospect of mealtime. She quickly realized that was baloney when he made his next move.

"Well then...what say I give ol' Kelly a hand in the kitchen, maybe stick around for dinner?" he proposed with a wink and a nod, patting the hood of the truck with one hand. "Y'know, just in case you change your mind 'bout the truck."

Dad shook his head, raised a finger, opened his mouth, chewed on an invisible sentence, questioned his taste, buttoned his lip, lowered his gaze, and exhaled slowly, all in the span of maybe two seconds. "...fine. I don't have the energy to argue tonight anyway."

Uncle Joe was already on his way up the three creaky wooden steps that led up to the front door. "Good call. Let's just go on inside and have a nice family meal and forget all about the truck and the tractor and the balloon for a bit, hm?"

"Yeah, good idea, I'm literally starving over here," Maeva added, packing up her sketchbook. "Probably gonna keel over and die of malnutrition any minute now!"

"Ain't nobody's fault but your own then," Uncle Joe said with a sniff.

Oh come on Uncle Joe, it's not like we don't know exactly what you're playing at, she thought back at him. You always think you're the sneakiest little snake, but you're about as subtle as a pissed-off llama in August…you'll come in, offer to "help" Mom make dinner, end up suggesting something super boring and mundane instead of whatever she was gonna make, then get all cozy and try to talk Dad into letting you hook up his truck after he's all full and sleepy. You're the single most predictable man on the planet...

But then again, Maeva didn't really mind his company anyway, if she was honest with herself. It was rare that her family ever had guests at their log cabin of a house way out in the woods anyway. Maybe that was just because nobody felt comfortable driving twenty minutes out of the nearest town all the way out along some creepy, lonely road that wound around the hills beneath a canopy of towering trees just to see the boring old Giroux family.

Or maybe it was because Dad had specifically chosen this location as a way to get away from "people" and they wanted to respect that. Dad often said "people" were who he worked around all day, and he felt as though he deserved better than them in his home life. Mom didn't exactly protest either; she'd always been at her happiest when she was surrounded by nature instead of "people".

And as for Maeva herself, well...she didn't completely hate it out here. I mean, sure, it was pretty inconvenient to live so far away from certain necessary amenities - libraries, basketball courts, public wi-fi, cupcake parlors - but on the other hand, she got to stand perched along the edge of a dozen wooded acres at all hours of the day. And those acres were full to bursting with various forms of adventure: ponds with actual wild fish in them, nasty overgrowths of blackberry bushes, a nighttime full of singing frogs, probably even a bear or two staked out deeper in the forest.

Too bad the bears were so shy and solitary, when they could be chasing Uncle Joe right now instead. Maeva had been looking forward to a crazy Mom dinner tonight, and now he was sure to ruin it with something bland and boring, like beef and potatoes, or some kind of weak chicken salad...

With nothing better to do, she followed everyone back inside, intruding on some kind of argument about whether or not leftovers were an acceptable way of eating a given meal. She plunked herself down at the dining room table and whipped out her sketchbook to resume where she'd left off. Before the comic about Uncle Joe, she'd been sketching a series of hot air balloons piloted by tiny cats.

There was simply no other explanation to the balloon's mysterious appearance, as far as she could tell. It had to have been piloted by a magical talking cat. It had to be. She'd seen movies about this kind of stuff. A magical talking cat piloted a hot air balloon that crashed in her back yard and then disappeared into the forest, and she was supposed to have chased after it for her adventure to truly begin, and she'd been so bewildered by the fact that the cat had spoken to her that she flaked out and went back home and missed her chance forever! What an idiot!

...but what really had her worked up wasn't just that the cat had spoken like a human, it was the sense of utter disdain the cat had treated her with. Why so rude? What had she ever done to him?

She wanted a rematch. She'd be ready for him this time. And she'd be extra polite, and let him talk about himself the whole time, stroke his ego - and maybe his majestic tufty fur if he'd let her - and compliment his mysterious green eyes, and...and what, did she really believe that wasn't just a dream? That some random cat had crawled out of a wrecked hot air balloon right in her own back yard and then spoke to her? Like a human? In English, even?

...yeah, actually, I DO believe it, she thought. Everybody else would think there's no way this kind of thing ever happens in real life. They'd say "this is real life, not some dumb cartoon". But I know better than that. I know what I saw.

I mean...I THINK I know what I saw...? It sounds too weird to be true, but isn't truth supposed to be stranger than fiction? There's weirdness everywhere, if you look hard enough for it...right? A cat that speaks human English probably wouldn't even be the weirdest thing I've seen in those woods. And besides, how do you KNOW cats can't talk if you've never heard one talk before?

...so then why didn't he want to talk to me? She bit her lip and frowned. What's wrong with ME, anyway? I'm normal. I don't have any diseases. My hair is totally normal for a human, straight and black and doesn't go past my shoulders. I don't wear stupid glasses or a weird hat. Some people make fun of me for my vague accent, but what would a cat know about accents?

...maybe I'm just really bad at talking to talking animals. Maybe I'm not the main character in the cartoon of My Life. Clearly I'm already a failure as the Purveyor of the Weird and the Supernatural that I think I am. What would my First Nation ancestors say, knowing I couldn't even talk to a talking animal?

...er, wait, is that racist?

"Maeva, why don't you go and chop us up some veggies?" Uncle Joe interrupted, finally snapping her back to attention in the real world. He pronounced the question marks in such a way that they could easily have been mistaken for periods by anyone unfamiliar with the Uncle Joe dialect.

"I'm, uh, not allowed to use the big knife," she lied, tapping the pencil against the page. "Not after the time I thought my pinky was a baby carrot and almost sliced it clean--"

"Vegetables are already chopped, Joe," Mom cut in, gesturing to the cutting board, knife in hand, with a flourish.

"Oh…" he nodded, looking around for another task to assign. "Well then, why don't you set the table?"

Mom pointed with the knife again, at first it seemed, right toward Maeva's face, until they realized she meant the table, in front of her, already more or less furnished from end to end.

Uncle Joe huffed and crossed his arms. "...well, at least go wash your hands, then."

Maeva took a moment to stare silently back at him, still mildly annoyed by the way he'd derailed her train of thought just now. She took it back, she was NOT okay with seeing Uncle Joe tonight, even if having company over was a rare treat.

Well, if he's going to be a pain in the butt, then so am I...

Without breaking her stare, she lowered the pencil and folded her sketchbook closed, tucking it into her backpack, slung loosely over the knob on the back of the chair. Then she raised her hands, spit on both of her palms, and rubbed them together, wiping them on her shirt afterward.

"Done."

Uncle Joe glared back at her, turning to Mom for parental intervention. All he got in return was a shrug and a noncommittal half-smile. He sighed and shook his head, then returned to slapping bread crumbs on a raw, slimy slab of chicken.

...called it, Maeva thought grimly.


	3. God Damns Demons, Don't He?

"Alright, alright, alright!" Mom called everyone to order as she banged a plastic serving spoon against a huge aluminum salad bowl, plopping it down in the center of the table. "So, here's a little primer on tonight's dinner! I was all set to wow you guys with this wild beer-braised rabbit recipe I found in a book that I found in an old box that I found in the corner of the bedroom that I found in this house, et cetera et cetera, but then, like magic, your Uncle Joe showed up outta nowhere and magically transmogrified it all into this wet green stuff with crunchy orange meat chunks in it!"

"It's a talent," Joe replied with a shrug and a spoonful of faux modesty. "...also you coulda just saved a mouthful of oxygen if you'd've just said 'chicken salad'...".

"Don't tell me how to live my life, Joe," she said, sticking out her tongue and taking her seat.

"Aww, we never get to have anything with beer in it," Maeva grumbled, casually drumming her fork on her plate.

"Beer-braised doesn't mean served with beer, dummy."

"No durr, Mom."

"You're too young for beer, anyway," she added with a sniff.

Maeva smacked her lips. "I bet I could handle it."

"Well, maybe you could, but I bet I wouldn't be able to handle it," Mom replied, grasping the serving spoon dramatically. "Because I'd get arrested by the secret police who are watching over our house, and I'd get hauled off to prison for knowingly serving a child alcohol, instead of real, government-approved chicken salad like any kind and loving mother ought to!"

"I'm not a child..." Maeva mumbled back.

"You are SO definitely a child."

"Moooom…".

"Alright, hey now," Uncle Joe butted in, smacking a hand on the table as he and Dad took their seats. "Enough squabblin', ladies. I'm sure a nice plate of dinner'll make you both feel loads better."

"Mhmm, thanks for your wisdom and insight, Joe," Mom replied dryly, rolling her eyes.

Maeva took a quick, subtle glance over at Dad in order to read the atmosphere before committing to any specific type of response. Her intuitions reported no hints of potential dissent or impending confrontation, so she let out a relaxed sigh, then thrust a hand toward the salad bowl…

...only to find it blocked at the last second.

"Maybe we oughtta say grace first?" Uncle Joe suggested, inasmuch as a stern glare and a resisting, hairy hand can suggest. Maeva slowly retracted her own arm, keeping an eye on him the whole time.

"Joe, I've told you this before, we don't really do 'grace' around here," Mom said with a loud sigh.

"Well I do!" he insisted. "Can'tcha just indulge me, while I'm here, as your guest? C'mon, it ain't gonna hurtcha...".

"Okay, alright, fine," she said, putting her hands up in a mocking praise. "Joe is great, Joe is good, let us thank him for our food, amen. Okay!"

"Kelly…".

"Don't 'Kelly' me," she griped, leaning back in her chair. "I've told you - again and again, I might add - I don't care what you do or how you live, but don't put your artificial sweetener in my cup of tea."

Joe just closed his eyes and shook his head, grumbling to himself. "...your only flaw is your own arrogance...".

How quickly the atmosphere had already changed. An aura of what almost felt like hostility now seemed to be drifting through the air. Maeva felt it wrapping around her shoulders like a thick blanket. "Hostility" shouldn't have felt like the appropriate word for the situation, really, it was only just a little family bickering at most, but...something about the air in the room suddenly seemed very heavy, and very tense. The atmosphere felt like the warm flash right before a thunderstorm...

"Kel, just let him do it, it's only going to take a minute," Dad said, tired and defeated, even though he hadn't been fighting in the first place.

"I said, Joe can do whatever he wants," Mom replied with a wave of her hand. "Doesn't mean I have to. Them's my rights."

Joe spread his arms to either side, inviting everyone to join hands. "Well, will you at least close your eyes?"

Mom rolled them instead, but begrudgingly took hold of his hand anyway, taking Maeva's in her other hand.

And all as one, the four of them took a breath in, and a breath out.

Maeva popped one eye open to continue assessing the scene. It was actually quite a weird sight to behold, when she thought about it. Here they were, four wholly different separate individuals, lost souls them all according to Uncle Joe, seated around an ancient table with eyes closed in dedication, channeling their reverence to some ageless, chosen deity...they may as well have been preparing a blood sacrifice unto an ancient supernatural being or something. Maybe Mom had a point in thinking this stuff was weird.

She could almost feel the gods above all hush up, and the already-tense air went completely silent with anticipation.

"Dear Lord," Joe intoned, addressing the god above them in reverence and humility. "Thank you for this meal…".

It IS really weird, she continued to herself. Everything about what we're doing here feels like a ritual prayer ceremony, asking the supernatural above to bless our consumption of the sacrificial lamb - er, chicken, I guess - as deemed tradition by many's a cult before us, dating back thousands of years…

An indescribable shiver ran down her spine.

"Bless this family, and keep us all safe durin' the comin' storm…".

How do the prayers know to go to the right god, anyway? Aren't there like, hundreds of gods out there, all strewn about between all the cultures in the world who've ever sent a single prayer out into the religious ether before? How does each god know when it's them specifically who's being prayed to? What if we dialed the wrong prayer hotline and our prayers are getting mistakenly sent to some god of cannibalism instead of...whatever the god Uncle Joe believes in is the god of?

She swore she heard something thump against the house outside. Or, no...? Maybe it was just her heart suddenly pounding louder in her chest in response to all of these sudden revelations...

"Help us remember to love each other as we love you…".

She definitely wasn't feeling love right now. She was feeling...something else. Like water sloshing around in her stomach. Or someone hovering just behind her range of vision. The lights briefly flickered overhead.

"In Jesus' name, amen."

And all as one, "Amen."

The light was still errantly flickering when Maeva pretended to open her eyes along with everyone else. She blinked to clear her vision, and the light fixture blinked back, audibly now.

"Didn't I tell you to change that light bulb the other day, Maeva?" Dad said, picking himself up and slogging over to the switch on the wall.

"I did..." she protested, grabbing a handful of chicken salad from the bowl with her bare hands, much to Uncle Joe's disgruntlement.

"Then you did a terrible job," he mumbled as he flipped the switch a few times to confirm it was still working. It was, but the blinking continued. In fact, it seemed to be getting even worse now. Dad grunted and returned to his chair. "Meh, fix it after we eat."

Click. Click-click. Click.

Something was definitely wrong. The light continued fritzing on and off, out of sync and out of rhythm as they ate in uncomfortable silence. Maeva was positive she could feel a looming presence in the room, unseen eyeballs burning a hole in the back of her head and an ill queasiness bubbling softly in her belly...

Creak.

Light bulbs don't creak…

She turned to Mom. She had apparently heard it too, but seemed to brush it off, picking a piece of lettuce out of her teeth instead.

She turned to Dad, still bitterly chewing his salad cud and occasionally casting dirty looks at the overhead light.

She turned to Uncle Joe, who seemed to be paused in mid-chew. His nose wrinkled .

"...d'y'all smell that?"

Maeva took a deep whiff, and then nearly coughed it back out. "What is that...smoke?"

Every eye at the table went wide, heads turning this way and that as they tried to quickly pinpoint the source of the smell. Maeva stood up and thrust herself toward the kitchen, nose-first.

Another thump from outside, she swore she heard it that time. No way the storm could already have made it all the way out here yet...right? Do storms thump?

"...I don't think it's coming from in here," she said, returning to the table.

The aroma was getting sharper, more of a burnt hair smell now. It wasn't just her stomach that felt uneasy anymore, the feeling had spread to her arms and thighs now; a trembling, almost. The air was forming a cocoon of heat and humidity all around her.

Instead of a thump, this time it was a terrifying crack.

The light blinked out completely.

And then came an unearthly screeching sound.

Everyone froze in place, or at least Maeva assumed they did, since she could barely see a thing. The screech had an undeniably "animal" quality to it, though no animal would have sounded quite like that without first being demonically possessed. It was hard to tell when the noise stopped, because the ringing it left in her ears was almost as loud as the screech itself. Blood raced inside her as her heart beat against her chest. Her fingers wrapped tightly around the back of the chair.

She opened her mouth to ask if everyone was alright, but her words were cut short by a crashing sound so loud that it rattled the very bones in her legs.

"What in god's name was THAT?" Dad asked, too tense to move, but probably throwing his hands in the air.

"Hey, no swearin'!" Uncle Joe shot back.

"Shut up, Joe," Mom cut him off. "That's not helping anyone."

"...so I'm guessing everyone's okay, then?" Maeva ventured, annoyed that she had to be the first to ask.

"I'd be a lot more okay if I knew what that sound was," Dad grumbled. "Get a flashlight or a match or something."

Click. A beam of light followed his words and waved around the room. Then a second one appeared beside it. Good old Mom, always a step ahead of the game. It wasn't like this was their first power outage, after all...

But there was another sound, too. Like a faint scratching coming from the other side of the front door. Wait, she'd closed it behind her when she came in, right?

"So what happened?" Uncle Joe asked as Mom passed a flashlight to Dad. "We blow a fuse or somethin'?"

"I'll tell you when we find out," Dad muttered through grit teeth.

Uncle Joe may have liked to preach preparation, but it was clear he didn't know how to follow up on that when it wasn't his house. He just stood there awkwardly, not given a job and unable to give anyone else a job, looking back and forth as Maeva's parents effortlessly glided their way through the darkness toward the fuse box in the utility room.

Maeva would have gone with them, but something else was happening. Did Uncle Joe not hear the scuffling sound at their feet? Maybe it was just her imagination playing tricks on her? She took in a sharp breath and gripped the back of the chair tighter, trying to follow the sound in the blackness below with her eyes.

Pit pat pit pat pit pat.

She swallowed as quietly as possible. Something was definitely inside the house. An animal? She didn't own any pets, but it didn't sound much bigger than the type of animal you'd keep as one. Was it the thing that had caused all that noise outside? Or maybe it had run away from the thing causing the noise? And how did it get inside, anyway?

Whatever animal it was, it was definitely slinking along the dining room floor now.

Again, she opened her mouth to speak, and again she was cut off...but this time by a different sound. A voice. A whisper. Coming from the floor…

"...what are YOU doing in here? You shouldn't be here...".

She swore her fingers were going to break the frame of the chair. She forced herself to speak.

"...guys, there's something in here."

She shielded her eyes as Mom shined a light in them. "What?"

"...it's moving around on the floor."

Both flashlights immediately pointed floorward, scanning back and forth like prison searchlights. They seemed to catch streaks and glimpses of something darting along the floor, but it was moving too fast between the pieces of furniture to keep a steady beam on it as it disappeared into the kitchen.

"...looked like a raccoon," Mom said, warily shining a light after it.

"Great, just what we need," Dad griped, angrily shoving his chair in. "You think maybe it chewed through a wire somewhere and knocked out the power?"

"Nah, you don't just lose power in the whole house 'cause some 'coon chewed through a wire," Uncle Joe butted in, desperate to take at least some measure of authority. "And I never heard of a 'coon that could scream like that...".

"Joe, go make yourself useful and see what happened outside," Dad growled.

And, from somewhere else within the shadows, the other voice whispered in agreement, "Yes, get out. Get out of here...NOW!"

"...why?" Maeva asked, before she realized she'd done so out loud.

"What'd you say, Maeva?"

Both flashlights shined into her face again. She batted a hand in the air, trying futilely to push the beams away. Even through the blinding light and the blinding darkness beyond, she could feel everyone staring at her, silently demanding an answer.

"N-nothing," she spit out, trying to look back down at the floor. "I wasn't talking to you."

"You alright, string bean?" Mom asked, the only one in the room with any chill still left in her voice.

"...you guys don't hear it?" she replied, tilting her head back and forth as she tried to home in on the sounds.

"Hear what?"

A peeling, scratching noise coming from the wall answered for her. It seemed to be moving quickly up the inside of the walls, bumping against picture frames and knocking collectible shot glasses off of the shelves.

"You don't belong here…" she heard the voice hiss.

"...we LIVE here!" she answered back, slightly irritated. Who did this voice think they were, anyway? She wanted to add a defiant "Show yourself!", but decided everyone was already giving her enough strange looks as it was.

"Who the hell are you talking to?" Dad demanded, again shining a light in her eyes.

"Language, Jean!"

"Go to hell, Joe!" Dad replied, blinding HIM with the light for a change.

Before either of them could deliver another award-winning retort, and before Maeva could interject an award-winning wake up call to their senses, she heard another scratch up above her, immediately marking the spot by pointing at it. And what she saw up on the ceiling above were two glowing green eyes staring back down.

Staring right into hers.

And the voice rasped, "Don't make me kill you...".

Silence. The lights flashed from Joe to Mom to Dad...and then to Maeva, who didn't even blink this time.

"Oh Lord, what is THAT?!" Joe shouted, following her outstretched arm to the eyes on the ceiling. "Oh Jesus, it's a goddamn demon!"

"Joe, please!"

"What, God damns demons, don't he?!" he protested, visibly almost quivering in fear now. "Oh! Uh...i-in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ...I-I command you to...to flee!"

Mom raised the beam up like a spotlight on the ceiling, and on cue, the eyes blinked out as the demon lunged straight down onto the dining room table, landing with a loud clatter against the plates.

And in a sudden moment of fight or flight, Dad threw his flashlight. The creature dodged, and with catlike reflexes, it leapt.

Dad immediately regretted his actions.

He staggered back into the wall, screaming at the top of his lungs as the demon's nails ripped into his cheeks and lips, his voice mingling into its own screeches and yowls. He tried to yank the thing off his face, but the hooked claws only pulled deeper at his skin as his tortured voice yelled louder.

Joe stood frozen in place, mouth agape as his hands moved in a frustrated, terrified dance at either side. Maeva herself couldn't do much better, though her brain seemed to be raising a red flag about something. She ignored it and snatched the flashlight from the table, holding it up to get a look at the monster.

...wait, what the hell?

As she watched in horror, even in the vague light of only a single flashlight, Maeva quickly identified the "goddamn demon" as the very same feral cat she'd seen crawl out of the balloon earlier. The colors and pattern down its back were identical, it was definitely the cat...

Fortunately for Dad, at least someone in the house was ready jump in and assist him. Flashlight in her mouth, Mom pinned him against the wall with the weight of her body, then deftly snaked her arm in between the demon cat and Dad's face, grabbing it by the head. When it tried to rake her arm with its back claws, she grabbed them in a bundle and quickly lifted it straight off Dad's lacerated face.

The cat wasn't having any of it though, and wriggled its way out of her grasp, wailing as it hit the ground and streaked off out the front door. Dad collapsed against the wall, groaning and pressing his hands to his face despite Mom's insistence on seeing the damage.

And despite his pained shouting, the loss of electricity, and the very clear spoken warnings earlier, Maeva's first instinct, her absolute top-priority thought processes, found themselves taken hostage by the ever-dominant spirit of Curiosity. And, now in full control of her waking thoughts, Curiosity was demanding she drop everything and follow after the demon. For a moment, Common Sense made an effort to resist, but it was too late. The Off Switch had already been hit, and her body was no longer accepting commands.

I KNOW I closed that door earlier, she thought as her legs carried her forward, automatically. I remember, I heard it click shut behind me, there's no way it could have been left open. And nothing COULD have opened it afterward, right? The storm would be the only thing strong enough to pull that off, and it was still days and miles away.

You should not be outside! a second thought in her head screamed. What in the world are you doing, you numbskull??? Your father was just brutally attacked! The power is out! Going outside is not the correct response to a situation like this!!!

But the trouble with a Curiosity like Maeva's is that once the mysterious Off Switch was flipped, she could hear thoughts like that echoing in her head, but was no longer able to send the instructions to her body to act on them. She often chalked it up as being literally possessed by the spirit of Curiosity itself.

And it was simply more powerful than she was.

The sky was already growing dark overhead, but the waning afternoon sun had left behind just enough vague blue for it to be brighter outside than inside the house. It would be a waste of remaining daylight to NOT investigate now, Curiosity rationalized for her. Better survey the scene quickly...

And that was when she noticed what should have been the most glaringly obvious detail of the crime scene: the giant utility pole that normally stood tall beside the bathroom window had been severed and knocked horizontal, fortunately falling away from the house. The incoming wires strung further down the length of the driveway had snapped and detached altogether. The power had been literally knocked out.

But how? she wondered, making her way down the wooden steps and ignoring the still-ongoing trauma back inside. The air is still weird and thick like the storm is already here, but there isn't even a breeze right now. Uncle Joe's tractor is still stuck out in the bog, and it's not like there's gonna be another hot air balloon falling out of the sky or anything...

So...what am I implying then? she asked herself, clutching her arms. That a cat did this? Do I really think some weirdo balloon-piloting wildcat knocked over an entire utility pole all by itself? 'Cause that's stupid. Or at least very improbable. And what did that one old-timey mystery solving guy say about improbability? "Once you eliminate the improbable, whatever remains...something, something...? The truth shall set you free?" I dunno...always hated that guy anyway.

Moving on, the next clue she noticed was the sparrows. About a half-dozen of them were littered across the parking area in front of the house, all dead. There was a distinct lack of visual gore or evisceration though, and they exhibited the same burning smell she'd picked up earlier. From their positions, it almost looked like they'd been perched on the electric wire when the pole fell.

...so why didn't they just fly away? she wondered, prodding one with her foot. How could they have died between the time it tipped and the time it crashed? Did they just sort of...forget how to fly and gravity killed them? Or were they already dead when they fell?

The chill of November seemed to slowly retake the air as she pieced the puzzle together inside her brain, inasmuch as she could make the pieces fit at all. Her final verdict was that the cat had probably seen the sparrows atop the pole, stealthily climbed up it, but was too heavy and knocked the old pole over, blowing a circuit out in the old electric wiring at the top, which killed the birds instantly, and the cat, being spooked by the loud noise, ran into the house through the door that someone else had left open somehow.

Okay. Sure, there was at least some basic logic in there. Bizarre and definitely far-fetched, but at least not totally unbelievable. It at least made enough sense to satiate the ever-voracious appetite of Curiosity, and that was all she needed in this moment to unlock control of her limbs again. Time to react more properly to the situation back inside...

Immediately returning to the living room, she now found herself surrounded by candlelight and squabbling adult voices, all of them preoccupied with the topic of open facial wounds. Nobody had even seen her leave the room, apparently.

Not that she was trying to think of herself at a time like this. But still…

"No, you NEED to go to a hospital," Mom insisted, pressing a towel against one side of Dad's face. "We can barely see what's going on in the dark, but you're obviously still bleeding. Also, whatever it was looked feral, so who's to say it wasn't diseased or something? Do you WANT a disease, Jean?"

"But if I go all the way out to the hospital, then I probably won't be back until tomorrow!" Dad replied warily. Mom was right, even in the candlelight Maeva could see that his face was a bloody mess, even after they'd cleaned him up. "Are you going to be alright if the storm hits before I'm back?"

Mom frowned and punched him on the shoulder. "Who the hell do you think you're talking to, bub?"

"...yeah. Okay, yeah, I know," he conceded, trying not touch his face. "There's no one I trust more to take care of this place than you, Kel."

Gee thanks Dad, Maeva thought, then immediately scolded her brain for thinking that.

"Good. Joe, get him to the hospital, will you?" Mom asked, fishing the keys to the truck out of Dad's pocket.

"Oh. Yeah, of course." Uncle Joe took the keys and gingerly helped Dad to his feet.

"Alright, no sense wasting time then," Dad said over his shoulder. "Take care of things. I'll try to call you with an update as soon as I can…".

And with the click of the door behind him, he and Joe were gone. Just like that. The dense, negative aura from earlier seemed to dissipate altogether, and the air finally became breathable once more. Maeva let out a deep sigh to confirm.

That just left her, a lanky noodle with a bad case of Inquisitive Mind Syndrome, and Mom, a self-made mountain woman trapped inside a beer-bellied body. It was gonna be a real girls' night in. Two fearless ladies, bound by blood, braving the horrors of the night together, stuck in a powerless wooden house, surrounded by waxy fire hazards, with a potentially diseased feral cat roaming around the area…

"This house is in good hands," Mom declared, as if addressing Maeva's thoughts directly. "You and me, we can hold down this fort for a night, without a light, am I right?"

"Yes, quite," Maeva nodded, completing the rhyme on autopilot. Her mind was still stumbling to catch up, overloaded and backed up with thoughts to process since the moment Curiosity had used up all of her mental energy.

"We probably oughtta save the generator for when that storm hits, though," Mom added, briefly rummaging through the things in the refrigerator. "So let's just try and ride this thing out for tonight, not use any electricity. You up for the challenge?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Maeva answered with a shrug. She hadn't planned on doing much more than drawing tonight anyway. "What about you, are YOU gonna be able to handle it?"

"Don't you worry about me, kiddo," Mom answered, turning to reveal arms full of beer she'd pulled from the fridge. "I'm gonna knock back a couple of these upper-lip-stiffeners while they're still cold. No power means no fridge means warm beer. Be a shame to waste 'em!"

Maeva snorted. "Upper-lip-stiffeners?"

"What, you want me to call 'em something else?" she said, lining them up along the edge of the table. "Moonshine? Firewater? Panther piss?"

They both looked at each other for a moment, then said as one, "...nah."

And then they both burst out laughing.

Despite everything that had happened today, laughter seemed to be the only appropriate response left. The future was uncertain, questions still lingered, and Maeva was at least somewhat certain it wasn't healthy for a person to be hearing demonic voices coming from the mouths of mysterious feral felines. Nothing about that kind of future seemed good or right. After so many years of life being exactly the same, one single day had derailed the entire thing and knocked her entire world flat on its ass.

And all she could do now was laugh at her mother's stupid jokes. "'Panther piss'??? Who the heck calls beer 'panther piss'???"

Pitch darkness be damned, the moon shone brightly that night, a lone halo in the ominous expanse above. Call it nothing more than a calm before the storm, but hell if that calm wasn't appreciated.


	4. The American Hillbilly Who Smelled Like Stale Potato Chips

Alright, sit back a second, and I'mma tell you a story. I think you'll like this one. The subject matter is relevant to you personally...

Way back in the day, and I'm talkin' WAY back, prob'ly like a couple'a hundred years ago, there's this mean ol' man who lived in a broken down house far out in the boonies. He's a crabby old hermit sumbitch, always shoutin' at people and sometimes shootin' at 'em too. 'specially if they set foot on his property.

And one day, this old hermit was sittin' in an old rocking chair, cleanin' the barrel of his custom-fit homemade shotgun with an old t-shirt...yes, everything in this story's old. I already told ya, this all happened at least two hundred years ago, and everything was old back then. Anyways. He's just sittin' there like a stump 'til along comes this li'l squirrel. Now the squirrel's just seen a nice fresh nut fall off a tree and into the grass. And he's just a dumb squirrel, so he don't know he's about to set foot on the old bastard's property, right?

And that old man, well, he may be a geezer at this point, but his vision's still sharp as a tack. And the second he sees the squirrel set one dainty little paw on the other side of his painted property line, he's already got that gun primed, loaded, pumped and shouldered. He's already taken aim. That squirrel ain't gonna know what hit him...

But just before he squeezes that trigger, he stops. Cause there's somethin' else out there too…he's not the only one with his eye on that squirrel. He can see it tucked away in the bush to the left, catchin' a lip of the bright green edges around its eyes. It's a big ol' tom cat, all hunched up and lookin' to pounce, silent as death itself.

Now gramps may be an old crab, but he's still a sport at heart. And ain't nothin' he loves more than takin' nature down a peg or two. So a'course he's gonna aim for the cat instead...

"No!"

Yup, he's gonna do it. He straightens his aim, makin' a prediction on where the cat's gonna land after it pounces, and he steadies his hands…

"No, shut up!"

And the cat takes a leap…

"LA LA LA LA LA!!!" Maeva jammed her fingers in her ears and marched around in circles, refusing to listen to the rest of the story.

"Aw come on, ya big pussy willow," the storyteller groaned, leaning against the side of the house, arms crossed. "Don'tcha wanna hear how the story ends?"

"LA LA LA I REALLY DON'T LA LA!!"

"Psh, whatever," he said, brushing her away. "Wasn't gonna end like you're thinkin' it was, anyway…".

Maeva glared at him, slowly removing her fingers from her ears and ceasing her chanting. He was honestly the last person on the planet she wanted the company of right now, but, seeing as Mom was entirely preoccupied in dealing with an equally unappealing nuisance of her own named Uncle Joe, and Dad was trapped in hospital hell with vicious facial lacerations, she really didn't have anyone else to talk to. Or at least anyone that would actually talk back...

It was funny, the top-priority person she WANTED to talk to right now wasn't even a person. And no matter how big the itch for conversation with that ever-mysterious Cat was, he was still nowhere to be found since last night's incident. So unless the rocks and trees were gonna start talking to her now too, the only person around she had to chat with in any capacity at all was none other than Uncle Joe's son, the local Goliath himself, Nash.

And of course, all he wanted to talk about was guns and hunting and three-wheelers and bodily jokes he'd been sitting on all week, just waiting for a chance to deploy them outside of his dad's earshot.

"I don't wanna hear stories about crotchety old dudes blowing cats' heads off, ya fart," she grumbled, stuffing her hands into the front pocket of her drab grey hoodie.

"Aww, why not?" he chided, elbowing her in the ribs. "You still got a big ol' soft spot for pussy cats or somethin'? Like a GIIIIRL?"

"I AM a girl," she reminded him, blowing a raspberry.

"I'd'a thought you'd be scared of cats now anyway," Nash continued, kicking the dust with his shoe. "Y'know? After what happened to your dad? Musta been some kinda big for a tom cat to rip his face open like that, huh?"

"Can we talk about something else? Anything else?"

"You ready to hear the rest of MY cat story?"

"NO!"

He snorted, spit on the ground, then resumed leaning against the wall. "Suit yourself, pussy willow."

Where did he even learn that, "pussy willow"? she wondered, crossing her arms and turning away, sourly. Was that supposed to be some kind of insult? An affront to girls and women everywhere? Well, it wasn't a very good one. Especially not coming from someone who looked like a scarecrow that had just come from a frat party and smelled like old potato chips.

No, Nash wasn't much to look at, at least coming from Maeva's perspective. He was only two years her superior, but he hovered around six feet, with bones twice as thick as Uncle Joe's, short tousled peanut-colored hair and, miraculously, all his teeth still intact. Everything else about him screamed "American hillbilly", and if he'd only been wearing a flannel jacket, he'd have been hired on the spot to play one on TV.

And now the walking stereotype was picking his nose absent-mindedly and flicking his findings onto the ground. "...welp, I'm bored. Why don'tcha entertain me or somethin'? I'm your guest, ain't I?"

Maeva pursed her lips and rocked on her heels, wondering if there actually WAS anything they could do on a day like today. Not even counting the fallen balloon or the face-clawing demons, Uncle Joe's shenanigans yesterday had thrown a wrench into the cogs of daily routine. He was more or less going to be hanging around until he could get the tractor free, probably waiting out the storm in the process. That wouldn't have been so bad by itself, but then he had to go and leave Dad at the hospital overnight just so he could bring the truck back and try towing his stupid tractor again.

And now, adding insult to injury, he'd dragged Nash along with him on the way back, to "keep him out of trouble" and "give him someone to play with" while he faced off against Mom for his supposed right to use the truck while Dad was away. This meant that, according to the unwritten tag team rule, Maeva would be tasked with keeping Nash at bay.

Yep, she'd been dealt a pretty crappy hand today. But complaining to the dealer doesn't get you new cards...

"Ehh, we got Monopoly somewhere I think," she offered, hoping the schmuck bait would get him on the defensive.

"I ain't a child, ya dingbat," he replied with a roll of his eyes. "C'mon, I wanna take a peek at that balloon crash."

"No," she said almost instantaneously, cutting him off with an outstretched arm.

He blinked and tilted his head expectantly. "...why not?"

Maeva felt the words piling up just behind her tongue, eager to escape, but she swallowed them back. Nash didn't need to know about how much she wanted to find the Cat again. Nash was the LAST person who needed to know about that…

"...it's...broken…" she finally spit out, unimpressively. "The whole thing is all busted up, it's not even worth checking out."

Nash wasn't buying. "What, you find somethin' over there you don't want me to see?"

"Nooooo, just…" she struggled, grasping for any reason at all. "It's just...dumb. Like, I already sucked all the entertainment out of it, there's gonna be nothing there for you. Trust me, it's all broken and muddy and terrible and you'd save yourself a load of disappointment if you just skipped it."

"Yeah, right."

"No, really!" she insisted, brain working overtime to come up with a convincing alternate route for this conversation. "You wanna see some REALLY cool stuff, we should go to...uhh...the lake! Instead! Yeah!"

Nash's face didn't change, but the pause before his response suggested he was least looking before leaping. "...why the lake?"

Crap crap crap crap think of something…

"...junk," was what she ended up with.

"Junk?"

"Junk."

She caught sight of a lopsided, inappropriate grin spreading across his face at the sound of the word, and it needed to be stopped.

"We can go fishing for random junk in the lake," she continued, impressed by her own improvisation skills. "People toss all types of crazy crap in the lake. Who knows WHAT we'll find."

Nash, still mentally giggling at the word 'junk', considered this for a moment, then shrugged and assented. "Guess it beats sittin' here lookin' at that stupid pimple on your nose."

She was at least 96% certain he was teasing her, 81% certain she would resist the urge to subconsciously reach up and feel her nose with her fingers and--dangit, she did anyway. The pimple was a lie after all. Jerk.

"Anyway, yeah, let's go fishin' for junk," he repeated, hands in his denim pockets as he turned in the direction opposite the balloon crash site. "Maybe we'll find a gold necklace or somethin'. Or some vintage dirty magazines."

Maeva snorted, stared at the ground for a minute, then begrudgingly trailed after him. What else was she really going to do today, anyway? If she hung around the house for too long, Uncle Joe would invariably come up with a task for her to carry out, with or without Mom's intervention. But again, the law of equivalent exchange meant that an afternoon free of Uncle Joe meant an afternoon filled with Nash. And sometimes neither of the two evils seemed lesser...

In any case, her successful diversion away from the balloon allowed her a breath of relief. She had decided beyond a reasonable measure of doubt that the Cat (she had decided to start capitalizing the word in her thoughts) would show up THERE next. It had to be there. The perpetrator always returns to the scene of the crime, right? And when he finally did return, boy was he gonna get grilled. Maeva had so many unanswered questions, most of them starting with "why", some of them starting with "how", and at least one that started with "what the hell".

BUT, if fantasy books had taught her anything at all, the only way she'd ever see the Cat again, much less get him to talk BACK to her, would only be if she came alone. Ever since Uncle Joe had gotten involved, she hadn't had a moment's peace to go Cat-hunting. Especially not now...

The lake would be a perfect distraction. A good five minute hike downhill to get there, and at a good hectare in size, it was big enough for two small islands to sit in the middle. Plenty of opportunity for storytelling and fishing for junk. Even the timing was perfect; the November air had already sent the geese and the frogs packing, and the weather was just barely warm enough that you wouldn't get frostbite no matter how long you stayed out in it, so long as you bundled up. This was a good setup. All Maeva had to do was keep the bozo occupied until such time as Uncle Joe finally decided to pack him up and check out...

"So you ready to hear the end of my story now?" the bozo cut into her thoughts as the driveway faded to uncut grass and began sloping downhill.

"Not really," she replied, flatly.

"Aw c'mon," he insisted, putting his arms out to steady himself as the slope started getting muddy. "You worried it might end badly for the poor little pussy cat?"

She glanced over at him. "...the cat survives?"

"Spoilers." He sniffed.

Her eyes narrowed in response, then quickly shot open again when her foot slipped forward beneath her. She caught herself, incredibly, with only one hand, just barely saving herself from yet another pair of mud-butt jeans. She praised the gods of genetics for making her both gangly AND flexible, and that by their blessing, she was able to hoist herself back upright without pulling a single muscle. Nash didn't even stop walking.

"Alright, so where was I?" he continued, planting each foot sideways down the hill for a better grip. "Cat was about to get blown away by the old guy, right? Okay. So everythin's all set. Gramps has his aim all lined up, the squirrel's still in position, and all that's left is for that pussy cat to make his move. He duckers down low, gets all tensed up, wiggles his butt for a second...then POUNCE! BLAM! And everythin' goes quiet…".

He stopped as he turned back to face Maeva again. "...he missed."

Maeva halted as well, arms out for balance. She blinked, her former expression supplanted by one of confusion. "...oh, the horror?"

"You don't get it Maeva," he continued, still stopped on the hillside. "This old guy was an ACE behind the barrel. Used to do trick shootin' to make his way through school before they banned it in public. There was no way he shoulda missed a shot like that."

"He did trick shooting with a shotgun?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

"Shut up," he brushed her off, still high on his own storytelling fumes as he once again continued his descent. "Point is, he knew he'd made a perfect shot, just like he always did. But his eyes musta been playin' tricks on him, cause he was way off mark. Cat looked like it landed on the wrong side a'where it should've. Like it jumped, then teleported outta the way right as the shot went off."

"Right, 'cause cats can totally teleport."

"This one could," he insisted. "Or it was an illusion, or somethin'. Anyway, the shot missed the cat, but it still hit the squirrel, and the cat just sorta stares back at him, like 'dude, what the hell?'. He stays like that for a few seconds, then picks up the dead squirrel and disappears into the bushes. The old man just sits there, scratchin' his head...".

Maeva smacked her lips. "...and that's the story? A nasty old man took a shot at a cat and missed?"

"It's PART of the story," Nash groaned, clearly peeved now. "There's more parts to it. That ain't the only time the old man sees the cat. Damn thing keeps showin' up on his property, and he keeps tryin' to get rid of it, but he can't. It just keeps dodgin' bullets and starin' back at him."

"I thought you said this was a scary story."

He again paused to stare back at her. "...you don't think that's creepy? A wild animal just starin' atcha, darin' you to do somethin' about it?"

Maeva took a moment to return the stare, unconvinced. It was obvious he was trying to bait her, banking on the Cat incident from last night, but to what end? Was he trying to scare her? Was he just telling an old ghost story to pass the time? Or was he hoping to get her talking, trying to dig up some info on the real-life Cat's whereabouts, so he could hunt it and kill it like the bastard hillbilly he was?

Getting a little paranoid there, aren't you Maeva? she asked, suddenly beside herself. You haven't said a word about the Cat, why would he even be thinking of it like that? He's not smart enough to bait you, he's just telling a story 'cause he's bored and looking to give you a cheap scare...

"I don't think I've ever had something like that happen to me…" she finally said, phrasing her words carefully.

"Really?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Y'all live in the woods and you never seen a critter just stare atcha like a deer in a pair a'headlights? You never even seen a deer in headlights?"

"I don't even have a pet…".

"You do now," he said with a sickeningly twisted grin.

Furious silence accompanied her glare. She'd already come up with a dozen sarcastic responses in her head, but none of them would be allowed access to her mouth. She couldn't risk letting anything slip, or getting him any more interested in the Cat. Paranoia might be her only lifeline of ever getting back to the balloon alone...

Her cheeks flushed as he still continued to stare back at her with that horrible smirk. She almost wished he WAS missing some teeth like a bonafide hillbilly. At least then she could laugh back at him…

"You look like you got somethin' to say," he goaded, honing in on her frustration. "You hidin' somethin'?"

Don't do it, Nash...

"What's the matter?" he pressed, his unstoppable grin growing even wider. "...cat got your tongue?"

She didn't even feel her fingers clench into a fist until she'd already wound up and by that time, momentum had already kicked in. Shouting something probably obscene, she threw the most graceful, wide-arcing punch she could muster, forgetting entirely about the constant laws of physics and gravity as her body pitched forward, missing her target by a foot and a half, and just falling, falling downhill into the awaiting arms of…

...Nash?

When the world finally came back to a stop, she found her face hovering inches from the mud and grass below, and as her lungs slowly refilled with air, she felt the restraint around her waist that was Nash's meaty arm. With a grunt, he pulled her back upright, straightening her out by grabbing onto her shoulders.

She stood petrified in his presence as his eyes met hers again. Gone was the silly smirk and the air of playful banter. There was a cold fire in his eyes now, burning with grave severity she hadn't ever expected to see in a face like his. Her legs locked up. Never had she been more terrifyingly aware of just how much bigger Nash was than her.

"...don't you ever take a swing at me again," he said, fingers digging into her shoulders with an iron-clad calmness. "You're lucky I caughtcha. Maybe you WON'T be so lucky next time...".

Maeva gulped, and nodded timidly as Nash released her. He resumed walking forward, leaving her in stunned silence. Somehow she'd always assumed that gulping was some kind of cartoonish exaggeration, and that nobody ever did that in real life. Well, better to be a loud gulper than a pants-wetter, right? She double-checked her pants anyway while his back was turned, just to be safe.

"Hey, lookit that, we're already here!" Nash's voice chimed in, tone reverted back to its usual carefree redneck cousin sheen. "Ooh, and someone even left us a boat right down yonder!"

Sure enough, Maeva could see a small rowboat built for two floating lazily in the shallows of the lake bank, tied to the small dock jutting out into its waters. It probably belonged to a neighbor, or possibly a sight-seer who was renting it from Mr Chokshi's Rental Shack on the opposite side of the lake. Local fishing enthusiasts made for good business, at least until the lake eventually froze over, bound to happen any day now.

"C'mon, let's take it out for a paddle," Nash said, quickly making his way down the rickety dock planks.

"That's...probably a bad idea," she replied hesitantly, still wary of upsetting him. "Somebody's probably renting it, and I don't wanna get written up for stealing again."

He raised an eyebrow. "Again?"

"BESIDES," she covered up, hoping the cold air would hide the flush in her cheeks. "What if something dumb happens and we get the boat all jacked up? I don't wanna be out three months' worth of allowance...".

"Then don't mess it up," he brushed it off, already lowering himself into the boat. "We ain't goin' far anyway. Maybe just out to an island or somethin'. Check it out, they already got poles, nets, bait...this thing's all loaded up and just BEGGIN' to be taken out!"

"Nash…".

"Hey, it ain't like we're stealin' it," he insisted, picking up a paddle. "It's already paid for, right? We're just makin' sure whoever's payin' for it's gettin' their dime's worth while they ain't usin' it. Now you comin' or do I gotta tell your mom which colorful word you used when you tried to deck me back there?"

The cold did nothing to hide the tomato red on her cheeks now. Maeva put her hands on her hips and bit her lip in consideration for a moment. And it was only a moment, because when her vision came back into focus, she was already lowering herself into the boat, taking the other paddle and getting ready to row. Curiosity must have taken control again…

To recap, she was sitting in a stolen rowboat, paddling out into frigid November waters, with no avenues of escape, in the company of a scary man well over twice her size who had almost made her pee her pants just a few minutes ago.

But what was the worst that could happen, right?

...right?


	5. You Can (Not) Kill Time

"Soooo...what kinda junk are YOU hoping to catch?" Maeva asked, in some awkward hope of keeping the ice broken between her and Nash as they surveyed the watery expanse of the lake, paddling their way around the perimeter of the nearest island.

"Doesn't matter, really," Nash answered, spitting into the water. "Fish. Weird old beer cans. Maybe we'll get lucky and somebody buried a time capsule on the island or somethin'...".

"Okay, Huckleberry Finn," she responded, rolling her eyes.

"We prob'ly won't find nothin' anyway," he continued. "Just a way of killin' time for now. Really I just wanna get a foot out on one of these islands."

"Hate to disappoint," Maeva said, genuinely hating to disappoint when her entire plan was built around killing time anyway, "...but there's not a lot to see."

Nash shook his head. "That ain't the point. We're here to see, whether or not there's actually anything to see."

Maeva frowned, trying to make sense of his words. So why did we steal the boat if we're not even going to do anything when we get to the island? I mean, I shouldn't complain, this is more or less exactly what my plan was anyway, but come on. We should have at least brought some shovels to dig for the treasure I know isn't even remotely possibly buried there. What sense does it make to put in all the energy and effort of rowing if the net gain is just to "kill time"?

Figures. Good old Guns-n-Ammo Nash, always thinking about killing SOMETHING…

She sighed, taking in as much of the crisp, clean air as she could before the impending storm eventually blew in.

...what does that even mean, to "kill time"? Time isn't something that can be killed. Time is an abstract concept; abstract concepts can't die. It doesn't have a physical form, you can't murder it. It doesn't even have an expiration date. It IS the expiration date. What a stupid expression.

Up ahead, Nash cleared his throat and hocked a loogey into the water.

And while I'm on the subject of death, she continued, letting her thoughts complete their inevitable circle, ...did the Cat really mean that part about killing ME? Did I...do something to piss him off? Was there some holy unwritten Cat law that I inadvertently broke somewhere? What did I do to deserve death?

He said he wanted us all out of the house, too. HIS house, he said...what, like he peed on it first, before I did, so it's his? I've been living in that house my whole fourteen-year-old life, and where's HE been all this time? Stuck in a hot air balloon? That ain't MY problem...

She huffed to herself. Well, you snooze you lose, you don't keep what you don't use.

Nice sound bite, Maeva.

Thanks, Other Maeva.

"Wake up, pussy willow, we're here."

She did wake up, looking around in confusion. Her eyes pointed first downward to the boat, then to the unused paddle in her hands, then to the muddy bank of the island, finally coming to rest on the towering stack of flannel and denim that was Nash. A few more blinks brought her mental processors back up to speed and she climbed her way out of the boat.

"Erm...so yeah. Here's the island," she said, splaying her hands to introduce Nash to the bountiful new biome they had entered.

He slid his hands into his pockets, took a slow glance around, and made the face that a colon and a capital T smushed together make.

"...it's...dinky," he finally said, tone rife with disapproval. "And I guess you weren't kiddin' about it bein' boring. Looks no different than everything else 'round here."

"Told ya."

It was true, the islands were really nothing more than short continuations of the rest of the woods that bordered them on all sides. The heartbreak of reality was finding out that islands actually WEREN'T cartoony mounds of sand and palm trees dotted with statues made out of garbage erected to gods that didn't exist. With that in mind, there really wasn't anything they could do on the island that they couldn't have already done on the mainland.

Nash bent over to peer at the ground, scanning east and west. "...ain't even a lousy beer can or nothin' out here. What a load."

"TOLD. YA."

"Then why'd you make me row all the way out here?" he chided, shaking his finger - thankfully not THAT finger.

"...I didn't? YOU'RE the leader of this idiot parade!"

"Least I got an idiot to follow me," he replied with a snort.

"Oh, go shove a cactus up your butthole."

Nash made a face that looked like "hey, I only did that ONCE", then sighed and took a seat on a fat rock center stage. He made a lap table by propping one leg across the other, folded his hands thereupon, and cleared his throat.

"Well alrighty then, if you're just gonna gripe and make rude comments about my anatomy, then I guess it's up to ME to provide us with some entertainment. Make sure our trip out here wasn't for heck-all...".

Her mouth open and shut a few times in anger, but she kept a tight enough rein on her tongue that it failed to escape and let slip any regrettable responses. Best not to make a scene out here, where no one can hear you scream, right? Besides, Curiosity had been summoned forth by the intriguing prospect of Nash "providing entertainment", and so helped to restrain her…

Nash flashed her a keen smile. "...so who's ready for more Old Man vs Cat stories?"

"Ugh, THAT again?" she groaned, slowly deflating. "You already told me about that. What more story is there to tell?"

"I only got through the first part!" he said before hocking and spitting into the lake again. "I told ya, it's a super creepy story. The cat keeps showin' up around the old man's house, always givin' him the evil eye from afar; no rhyme, no reason. And the old bastard keeps tryin' stuff to get rid of it, get it out of his life forever, and he just CAN'T. I'm tellin' you one of THOSE stories now."

"Where do you even get this stuff?" Maeva asked, leaning against a sapling barely as tall as she was. "You just pull it out of your butt as you go?"

"Don't be dumb, it's an old story that's been around since like, forever," he replied snidely, as if she should have already known about it. "Creepy cats and horror stories go together like mayonnaise and eggs."

Maeva made an almost legitimate gagging sound.

"I thought you liked horror stories, anyway," Nash added, shaking his head.

"Cause what could ever be more horrifying than an animal you couldn't just kill with a gun, right?"

He only glared back at her in response. She surrendered, palms up peacefully.

"Anyway," he continued forcefully as a bird flew symbolically overhead, "...so the old man's found himself in quite a pickle now. 'Cause it got to the point where the cat starts showin' up every single day, and the old man can see him all over the place. Struttin' 'cross the windowsill, jumpin' birds on the roof, sittin' pretty just on the edge of his property with one paw inside the painted boundary line, like he was playin' the old man for a fool, just darin' him to take another shot. Cat was a wily one, I tell ya. Moved faster 'n you could blink. Old man couldn't shoot him even if he wanted to! And believe me, he DID want to!"

Maeva hadn't even realized she was actually paying attention now. She'd become much more invested now that the story was no longer likely to end in animal decapitation, or a taxidermied trophy to be hung and worshipped over a fireplace.

"So," Nash continued, sitting forward with storyteller's glee, "What's a mean old man to do when there's a superhuman cat poppin' up all over the place with nothin' to be done about it?"

"...superhu--?"

"Shut up," he said, making a swatting motion with his hand. "You know what I mean."

"Cats ARE superhuman anyway," Maeva added. "Have you seen how high they can jump? Can YOU jump four feet in the air?"

"ANYWAY," he boomed, stamping his foot on the ground as if it would make a dramatic echoing noise way out here, even though it obviously didn't. "There's old sayin' that goes 'if ya want somethin' done right, do it yourself', right? But when you CAN'T do it yourself, the sayin' changes to 'what you lack in natural ability, you make up for in money'."

Maeva blinked. "...I'm at least 73% sure that's not a real saying at all."

"Hey, quit interruptin' or I WILL fart on you, kid," he warned.

She immediately halted and obeyed, eyes alert with fear.

He paused to reload his thoughts.

She waited.

He continued.

"So anyway, the old man finally cooks up this plan, a surefire solution to all his cat problems. He gets up off his dusty old ass and heads down into the town, askin' kids if they wanna make an easy buck. Keepin' in mind, a'course, a whole dollar back then was like fifty dollars, so it was kind of a big deal. Anyway, he picks out a kid and he tells him all he's gotta do is bag the cat, if he can catch it that is, and take it out on a boat and...y'know…'take care' of it."

An invisible red exclamation point popped up over Maeva's head. The story had suddenly turned in the opposite direction, toward a typical Nash ending.

"So the kid goes off lookin' for the cat, and it's not like it's hard to find him, right? Damn thing's been skeevin' around the old man's house like a vulture. Just watchin'. Waitin'. Lickin' its paws like the filthy animal it is...anyway, kid baits a trap for it and stakes out the place. Old man doesn't like havin' a kid on his property, but he's already at wit's end by now, he just wants that cat gone."

She automatically grit her teeth, having come to expect a gruesome end for all animals in Nash's stories.

"And wouldn'tcha know it, the trap works like a charm for the kid! He did in one day what the old man couldn't do in months! It was like he'd been cursed and wasn't allowed to lay a finger on it, but the kid was innocent, so to him it was no big deal at all!"

"...are you seriously telling me this is because of some ancient curse?" she interjected, smartly cutting herself short from slipping a cuss in there.

"So the kid scoops up the cat in an old gunny sack," Nash breezed past her, high on the fumes of his own storytelling. "And he carries it on down to the lake. Tosses the sack in a little rowboat, makes his way out to the center, finds himself a nice deep spot. It's so deep that you can see your reflection on the surface of the water, but everythin' below is just total darkness. He's gonna do it."

She hadn't even noticed she was holding her breath now. Tragedy or not, she had to know how this ended.

"He reaches into the sack, grabs the cat by the scruff of its neck, and pulls him out to have one last look at him." Nash paused, leaning forward. He lowered his voice. "The cat's givin' him that same creepy stare. Just darin' him to try somethin'. Like it's better 'n he is or somethin'. Starin' straight into his soul."

Was she sweating? Or had she simply stopped noticing how cold it ought to be outside?

"And the kid just stares right back, givin' the devil an evil eye of his own. It's time to do the deed."

Anticipation writhed inside her body. Curiosity was all ears.

"He ties a stone around the cat's neck, almost tight enough to choke it. And then...he straight-up tosses the cat over the side of the boat."

He took a moment to stare back at her, as if awaiting a reaction. The only one she could give was "...that's it? Some kid swoops in and catches the mysterious demon cat all on his own and then manages to chuck it in the lake and drown it?"

"...'tweren't the cat that drowned," Nash said with a suspiciously evil grin.

"...'tweren't?"

"They never saw the kid again."

She re-ran the sentence through her brain. "...what?"

"Yeah, kid just up and disappeared," he said, as if it couldn't be simplified any further than that. "Old man saw him go out on the lake, disappear behind a little island, and he never came back. Sun down, sun up, he was just plumb gone without a trace."

Confusion shadowed her expression, but Nash continued before she could add any other emotions to it.

"The whole town was furious. Back in the day, everybody in the town knew everybody else in the town, and if even one lamb had gone astray, you bet your bony ass the whole entire town was gonna go pitchforks and torches on whoever's responsible."

"Now, a'course they tried to stick the whole thing on the old man. Said he prob'ly shot the kid himself and buried the body somewhere on that big ol' chunk of private property. Why else would he get so uppity about people crossin' that painted line, 'less he had somethin' to hide?"

"So what'd they do?" Maeva pressed, Curiosity now salivating over the need for closure. "Did they string him up in the town square or what?"

"How could they?" came the reply as he shook his head slowly. "They never did find a body, there was no evidence to try him in court over. People spent all night draggin' the lake for him, couldn't find a damn thing. Either it was a perfect crime or the old coot really didn't do jack all in the first place."

"...so...so…" she sputtered, rolling her wrists as her mouth tried to keep up with her thoughts, "...what about the cat then? Mutual death?"

His lips oozed into a deliberate smile. "...the cat came back, the very next day."

His words lingered a little longer than they should have, passing through Maeva's subconscious again and again as she stared blankly back at him, trying to decide exactly how she felt about it. Yes, obviously, she knew the whole story was nothing more than a ploy to get her riled up. A cheap shot at Dad's expense, playing off the terror of the situation. But something about the way Nash told the story...and the way the Cat had spoken to her…

An ill-boding electric shiver ran down the back of her neck.

"Whoa, now what in the hell happened over there?" Nash suddenly shifted gears, pointing with his boot at a massive tangle of sticks and mud further down along the edge of the island bank. "'s'like a tree fell over or somethin'."

"What, you've never seen a beaver lodge before?" Maeva replied smartly, before she meant to. She bit down on her tongue regretfully. Don't just blurt things out, idiot!

"...THAT'S a beaver dam?" he said, pulling himself to his feet. "Looks like somethin' a bulldozer woulda shat out."

Oh god, he's making a move, she said to herself, pushing into action. She didn't even care that she'd caught him swearing and had the power to bust his ass to Uncle Joe now. This was more important.

"Thing's stronger'n it looks," he continued, giving it an experimental kick. "Ain't nothin' but sticks 'n mud though?"

"Get off it!" she cried suddenly, dashing over to pull him away. "You're gonna break it!"

"Nah look, it'll be fine," he said, stepping up on top of it. "Thing's holdin' like a champ!"

"Get! OFF!" She snatched his wrist and tried, most futilely, to pull him back down. Her heels dug into the muddy bank against his resisting weight, and for the third time in two days almost sent her flying backwards. But she managed to skate herself back upright, looking him in the eye. Nash didn't seem particularly impressed.

"The hell's your problem?" he said, yanking his arm away and spitting once again into the water behind him.

Maeva bit the inside of her cheek, scanning through several different configurations of the reply she wanted to give him before finding one that didn't contain any loose-lipped swearing. "You're too big, you jack...rabbit! You've exceeded the maximum weight limit!"

"...jackrabbit?" he repeated, changing from a scowl to a smirk in the span of a snort. "What, you worried I'm gonna smash your little beaver or somethin'? And I thought you told me you didn't have a pet."

"Just get off! Don't hurt him!" she shouted, conveniently leaving out the part where yes, she'd even given him a name and everything. Of course she was worried. Being crushed by a redneck was not the heroic death she'd wanted to see for Mister Bellingham.

"Or what?" he challenged, sneering down at her from the tower of his face.

She hesitated, then puffed out her chest and responded with, "...or I'll drop kick you right in the marbles."

She had said it. But had she meant it?

Nash raised an eyebrow and slowly put his hands on his hips. "You ain't got the marbles yourself, ya pussy willow."

All she could do was glare back up at him, fingers flexing and unflexing, giving her options to punch or slap, should the kick miss its target. She could already feel the muscle in her leg softly spasming, eager to test its strength against the self-proclaimed might and girth of the giant's marbles. But would it really be worth it?

Nash was older, bigger, and stronger than she was. Getting into any sort of altercation out here would most likely end in getting pinned to the ground and force-fed mud or something…still, Curiosity was thirsty for control, demanding she kick him anyway, just to see what would happen…

He sniffed, waiting for her to respond.

...just do it.

Nash squinted, trying to read her expression, and tightening his grip on her wrist just in case.

...DO IT.

She reared back.

Nash suddenly stepped aside, releasing her as she thrust forward. "...hey, is that OUR boat?"

She caught herself against the side of the lodge and turned on the balls of her feet to look in the direction he was pointing, where could be seen a small boat, upside-down and slowly drifting further away from the island's bank. "...wait, what?"


	6. Curiosity Isn't About Calculations

Sure enough, it was a boat.

Thankfully, it wasn't THEIR boat - the boat they'd stolen, that is - but it definitely was a boat, made of old dark wood and floating upside-down in the gentle, rippling lake water, weightlessly drifting its way toward them.

Nash hopped down off the beaver lodge and stood along the bank to get a better view of it. Curiosity's lust for marble-kicking vengeance would just have to wait.

"Looks pretty old," he observed, with the keenest of eyes. "Almost looks like it's been floatin' around for months or somethin'."

"Well if it has, then I've never seen it before," Maeva replied, pulling her arms in close from the cold. "I was just down here a couple of weeks ago. It's not really boat season anymore."

Nash sniffed and continued to not look at her when he spoke. "Then how come we found our boat all hitched and loaded, ready for action?"

She glanced down at the other boat in question. "...oh shhhhhnikies, we really oughtta return it, dude. It's getting late, and Mister Chokshi is probably going to--".

"Mister Chokshi can go suck a corn dong," he interrupted, straightening up and half-smiling at his own joke. "We gotta go check this thing out!"

"What? Why?"

He finally turned to face her again. "Why not? You got somethin' better for us to do?"

"...I guess not, but--"

"Then shut your scrawny ass up before I kick it."

Her arm raised in a gesture meant to delay him, so she could take a moment's hesitation to review and contrast her options, but once again, she found that her limbs were no longer hers to control. She too was overtaken by an incontestable desire to learn where this mysterious boat had suddenly come from...or perhaps, where it was heading, maybe?

"C'mon, pussy willow," Nash said, shoving their own boat back into the lake. "We're gonna get us a closer look."

As expected, Curiosity steered her back into her spot on the stolen boat, and took immense excitement in the journey ahead, no matter how short it would really end up being when you calculated it all out. Curiosity wasn't about calculations anyway. It was all about unapologetic zeal for adventure.

Sometimes Maeva wondered if Curiosity should have been her defining personality instead of Cautious Enthusiasm. She wished she'd at least been born with control over the switch that dictated which one was in charge at any given time. But such a privilege was neither here nor now, and there was nothing that could be done but to ride out this course of events, see it to whatever manner of completion was waiting for her at the finish line.

She shivered again. Oof, should've brought a coat today, Maeva... 

Nah, what am I saying? Bring on the cold! I wasn't born in Canada for nothing, was I? What, like a little chilly breeze is gonna deter the great Maeva Giroux? What would my First Nations ancestors think if--y'know, I should probably stop saying that…

But seriously, she continued as she relinquished her hold on the oars to sequester her hands within the front pocket of her hoodie, how the heck did it so cold all of a sudden? It's only November, for god's sake...

Up ahead, Nash kept rowing, eyes on the prize. Didn't he feel it too? Why wasn't he shivering? Was he so enrapt with this new objective that he couldn't feel the intense freezing cold out here?

The breeze got stronger.

...no, something has to be wrong about this. The wind's eating right through my fleece like it's paper, and he may be a big guy, but there's no way he can't be feeling this deep freeze out here without even wearing a jacket.

She tried to say something about it, but her jaw hinged shut and wouldn't open without her teeth chattering. She could feel every hair on her arm slowly stand to attention beneath the fleece, and hugged herself closer, pulling her knees to her chin.

"Well shoot, look at that!" Nash said as they pulled up alongside their prize. "This thing's ancient!"

Maeva tried to regain enough of a grip to give the boat a once-over of her own. Captain Obvious continued to be right, it was definitely an old boat, oddly squared in shape. The wood was warped and decaying, held together by large bolts and screws that may have been made of pure rust. Everything about it was crude and screamed 'homemade disaster', but it was clearly a functional boat, barely big enough for a single person to ride in.

"Hmm...ain't big enough for us to row it back," Nash surmised, sitting up on his knees and running a hand along the top - well, more accurately, the bottom - of the boat. He seemed to be searching for a handhold. "...can't get it flipped over, neither."

He turned to face Maeva, follow-up question in his mouth, but paused when he saw her hunched up over herself for warmth. "...what's the matter pussy willow, you cold?"

"...n-no...s-sh-shut up…" She sword icicles were forming on her fingertips as the cold invaded its way down to the ends of her every extremity.

Nash frowned. "...no, you look like you're freezin' to death. You gonna be okay?"

Of course I am, you clod, she thought back at him. It's not like one tiny little breeze is gonna kill me. I mean, yeah, I'm clearly shivering and I can feel my nips getting all pointy, but it's gonna take more than a little frostbite to render me helpless. I'm a fighter. I'm a warrior. It's in my genes!

"I'll be f-fine," she said, enunciating decisively as she forced her breath to stabilize. Just saying the words out loud felt like she had sparked a tiny fire in spite of a blizzard.

"...you sure?"

"Yeah." She couldn't show weakness now. Showing weakness was a sign of...well, weakness. And the last thing she wanted Nash to think of her was that she was weak. No time to question things like logic and sanity right now, she needed to focus on feeding that tiny fire.

Nash shrugged and shook his head, muttering something probably sexist under his breath as he continued fumbling around for a way to turn the old boat right-side up. He clapped his hands clean of the black gunk they'd accumulated, then wiped his hands on the back of his jeans.

"Bet we can tow it back to the island and get 'er flipped over once we get there," he said, taking the opportunity to spit in the lake for the first time in five minutes. "...if you're up for it, that is."

With some effort, Maeva forced her limbs to uncurl and flashed him a thumbs-up. She was still covered head to toe in goose pimples, but it felt like her hands had warmed up a bit over that inner fire and were ready for use again. Nash leaned out over the side, wrapping his arms as far as they'd reach around the other boat - or, as Maeva preferred to think of it, groping as much of the boat's bottom as he could - and she took hold of the oars.

He nodded.

She nodded.

And began rowing back toward the island.

Both remained silent in the process. Or maybe Nash was talking, but she wasn't listening. She was concentrating now. Maybe if she just continued to ignore the cold...no, to explicitly disavow the cold altogether...

I'm not cold, she told herself in spite of her spine's desire to rattle with shivers. I'm a machine. The steel of my body is cold, but my stomach is stoked with burning black coal. I am anything but cold.

Each deep breath brought in a rush of sharp, frigid air, but came back out as hot, fiery steam.

"Ain't never seen a boat this old before," Nash continued, leaning out a little farther to get a better grip. "Lookit this wood. It's gotta be a hundred years old, at least'!"

Maeva tossed a quick glance over her shoulder and nodded, exhaling fire between her teeth. She could feel the heat expanding like a balloon within her chest, burning away the numbness.

"Y'know…" he said, and she could just HEAR the grin emerging on his face, "This'd make a great boat for the kid that tried to drown the cat. Remember? In the story? Looks about the right time period for that, wouldn't ya say?"

"How should I know?" she fired back, between heated breaths. "It's YOUR story, dude!"

"Well then just play along," he replied, leaning over even further, threatening to tip their own boat at this point.

"Watch it!" She growled over the noise of her own internal combustion engine. "Get your ass back in the boat before you spill us out of it!"

Nash just nodded, unperturbed, and pointed ahead with his nose. "Eyes on the prize, pussy willow."

She grit her teeth in response, the fires now leaping around inside her body. She WAS a machine now. One small spark of encouragement had transformed all of the paralyzing cold into searing heat. Her arms may as well have been on fire.

A new vision flashed in her mind. She saw herself crashing the boat into the island.

...on purpose.

Whoa! came the long-lost voice of Reason, tightening whatever nut had been loosened atop the steaming valve of Maeva's sanity. Slow down, girl! Where'd all this crazy come from? You catch a case of stupidity from hanging around this guy for too long?

She inhaled slowly, letting the fire burn harsh and bright for just another moment, then slowly fade back down without a fresh income of oxygen to sustain it. And as the flames lessened, the redness cleared from her vision, and the energy emanating from her body was no longer infernal nor arctic. Her heartbeat relaxed. The hair on her arms retreated. And she rowed on, once again calm as the lake's own surface, straight on toward the island.

And still almost crashed right into it.

"Get your head outta your ass and pay attention when I'm yellin' at ya!" Nash yelled at her. She shook herself back into thought, and glanced up to see that he had shoved her out of the way and used his foot as a bumper at the front of the boat. For once she was actually grateful he was so tall, and that his legs gave him the reach for them to brake in time.

On the other hand, he'd made physical contact with his hand against her shoulder, so she'd probably have to have it amputated now.

"Anyway," he spit, figuratively AND literally, "Now that we ain't about to die out here anymore, let's have ourselves a look-see!"

She carefully stood up in the boat, took a mighty step up, out, and over, then joined him at land's edge. Together they stared down at the piece of junk for a few silent moments, hands on their hips like a pair of engineers looking down at a plumbing disaster on Main Street.

"Man, where'd this thing even come from?" he started, walking around the edge to view it from another angle. "Thing looks like it's been floatin' around for months...years maybe even!"

Maeva shrugged, still trying to wrap her head around the sheer gamut of emotions she'd just been through. "I told ya, I've never seen it before."

"Prob'ly 'cause you barely even look where you're goin'," he huffed, not looking at her again. "Look how rotten this wood is. Swear to heaven it could be a hundred years old and I wouldn't be even a bit surprised."

Okay, yeah...so now what? she wondered, side-eyeing her colossus of a cousin as he kept craning his neck this way and that to get a better view of the boat.

"Now we gotta flip it over," Nash answered her, running his hand along the underside lip of the boat. "Whatcha wanna bet there's somethin' inside it?"

She shrugged. The notion that some piece of hundred-year-old history might still be lying between the floorboards and the crossbeams of an old, rotten-wood boat just didn't seem to strike her as bet-worthy at the moment. In fact, the whole ordeal suddenly seemed much more mundane without a battle against an eerie chill or a consuming inner fire. Curiosity seemed to have died along with them. The world had gone normal again...

"Aw come on," he pressed, frowning up at her. "Ain't you got no sense of adventure?"

"Hey, I'm here, aren't I?" she replied, vaguely.

He held her stare for a moment, then added with a keen smirk, "...what if we find a body in the boat?"

She didn't answer, but felt the lid on Curiosity's coffin budge just a bit.

"What if this really was the same boat from the story?" he continued, eyes flicking back and forth as he began putting the pieces together in his head. "Yeah, same boat that kid used when he tried to drown the cat. Story goes that he drowned out at the bottom of the lake, but them townsfolk seemed pretty convinced it was the old man's fault, right?"

She nodded, letting Curiosity rise again to give her other emotions a brief respite.

"So s'pose they gave up lookin' after a while, and just didn't see the boat floatin' out on the lake in the darkness?" He turned to face it again. "And what if his nasty rotten corpse is still sittin' here, trapped in the little air pocket underneath this boat?"

The distinct sound of a twig snapping could be heard, faintly, from somewhere nearby.

"C'mon, help me flip it so we can find out."

Without a moment's hesitation, Maeva dropped into a squat and dipped her fingers into the freezing cold water to grasp the lip of the old boat. Nash followed suit, meeting her gaze with a nod, and together, they heaved.

And when the boat flipped over, neither could believe what they saw sitting inside it.

"...holy shit, it's a damn tom cat!"


	7. I Was Threatened

There was no mistaking that toasted-marshmallow coat, those shimmering green eyes, or that special blend of irony and misfortune that only the hand of Fate could spank her with. This "damn tom cat" was undeniably The Cat, and how it had gotten where they found it now was a mystery with no time left to solve.

Because before Maeva could even lament about how finding the Cat right now was literally at the top of The List of Worst Possible Things That Could Happen Today, Nash immediately took that top spot himself by proving what blind idiocy was entirely capable of. He made a dive for the Cat.

It was like deja vu in slow motion.

Already wound up like a spring, the Cat made a move to dodge, but changed its mind halfway through and leapt up to meet Nash's face head-on, its horrible yowling screech blending into his own pained scream as claws met flesh. But, to use his own words for emphasis, Nash was no pussy willow, and he chose to fight back.

He grabbed the Cat by the scruff of its neck and yanked it away from his face, roaring through the pain of torn skin, and slammed it back down against the earth, trying to crush it. But the Cat was quicker and managed to worm its way out of his grasp, latching on and sinking its teeth into his arm with a mighty death grip.

"DON'T KILL HIM!" Maeva shouted, unsure in the heat of the moment whether she meant Nash or the Cat. She made a move to rush in and assist, but some mysterious force had locked up her muscles. They refused to budge.

Nash wasn't just screaming in pain anymore, there was a distinct rage powering his voice now. He couldn't seem to pull the Cat off his arm, so he jerked himself up to his feet and tried beating it in the head with his fist. Naturally, this only made the Cat more furious, and the unearthly siren wails it was already making intensified accordingly.

COME ON! she shouted at her body, or at least inside her head. MOVE! HELP HIM! HE'S GOING TO DIE!

...but her muscles failed to respond. REFUSED, almost. She was only able to stand there, watching in helpless terror as the cousin she didn't even like was savagely torn apart. A familiar feeling of spiritual possession, but not by the spirit of Curiosity this time...

Every blow Nash landed on the Cat's body was having the exact opposite effect of what he wanted, only making it more and more aggressive. Ears flat to its head, it clawed its way up his arm, gnawing and slashing the flesh open on its way back up toward his face. Not knowing what else to do, he instinctively shielded his head with his good arm, holding the afflicted one as far away as possible.

But doing this caused his weight to shift, and he thrust a leg back to steady himself. And the patch of solid earth behind him that should have supported his weight did not, sending him careening backwards right into the freezing autumn waters of the lake.

At the tone of his scream, Maeva felt her muscles finally break the metaphorical ice they'd been encased in, and she rushed forward to grab whichever of Nash's flailing limbs she could get a hold of first. As the water splashed all around, splattering her with intense patches of cold down the front of her body, she almost swore she saw it slowly turning red. But the shock of the cold helped her shut out Curiosity's morbid imagination long enough to pull her goliath cousin back out of the lake and worry about it later.

Out of the corner of her eye, something wet and gray streaked past them toward the beaver lodge…

Sputtering and coughing, Nash clutched his left arm close to his chest as together they dredged his legs up out of the water. By some miracle, or the hand of a benevolent god above, Maeva managed not to slip in the mud, giving Nash enough of a lead to pulled himself the rest of the way out. Once he was safely out of the water, she dropped into a squat beside him. "...a-are you gonna be alright?"

For a few moments, he did nothing but breathe heavily through his teeth, clearly trying hard not to shiver. He didn't want to show weakness any more than she did. As he stabilized, he rolled up the sleeve of his shirt to get a look at his arm, grimacing at the sight. Maeva wanted to turn away, but Curiosity protested, and the sight of those red, vine-like gashes was sure to remain indelibly etched into her memory for many days to come…

Just before she asked again, Nash answered her question in a low, ominous tone reserved for the grim reaper himself:

"...I'm gonna KILL that cat…".

His words bounced around inside her head. She could see his face was still dripping wet, but his eyes were livid and cracked with red around the edges. He very clearly meant what he said.

And Maeva wasn't sure how to respond.

Is this a nightmare? she wondered, her vision blurring out as her mind disconnected itself for a moment. This is everything I wanted NOT to happen. How did it get like this so quickly? In just two days, I met a demon, watched my Dad get his face split open, had all my plans ruined by my jackoff of a cousin, and now I'm the only one around who can take care of said jackoff? Why me? Why now? Where did my karma go so wrong?

A voice from the outside pulled her out of the stream of consciousness and back into the crisp, cool air of the waking world.

"...huh? What'd you say?"

Nash spat on the ground, growling through tightly-ground teeth. "Where'd that sumbitch pussycat get to?"

Maeva blinked, trying hard to keep her eyes from darting over toward the lodge. "...I...didn't see which way he went…".

"DON'T YOU LIE TO ME, MAEVA!" Nash shouted, drawing himself into a ball before pushing up onto his knees. He winced slightly as he rose to full height, but even that did nothing to diminish the vitriol in his voice. "If you're lyin' to me, so help me I will break your neck like a twig!"

"I-I don't know!" she shouted back, though her voice wavered. She felt herself take a step backward, instinctively clutching her arms tight. She couldn't help shrinking. It was a weakness too intense to hide. Whether she knew it consciously or not, a man with a raised voice and the connotations that might result from that was the single most terrifying aspect of the entire situation.

Nash exhaled deeply, muttering what she was sure amounted to a four-letter word that could land him in some serious big-boy time-out. She might have been amused by this if she weren't on the brink of curling into a ball and crying under the weight of his penetrating stare.

The fire behind his eyes dimmed away as he finally broke the gaze. Another thought seemed to have taken center stage in his mind.

"...I AM gonna murder that cat," he said, pointing a finger at her - no, still not THAT finger. "I ain't no idiot, I know where to find it now. Good thing I always come prepared…".

He took one last look at his bleeding arm, and spit over his good shoulder. Then he locked eyes with Maeva once more.

"Wait here."

With that, Nash climbed back into the boat - the good boat, the one that wasn't even theirs - and shoved off, by himself, paddling with only one oar, alternating between sides to keep himself straight...

...leaving Maeva alone, to fend for herself on the island…

...stuck with a homicidal feral Cat.

She sat down on the big rock and watched him row back, still all but paralyzed by what she was fairly sure had indeed just transpired. Daylight was still in full effect, and would be for another couple of hours, so at this rate, there was still room for even MORE to transpire today. It took several moments for Curiosity to realize the golden opportunity they'd been left with.

Nash was gone. And the Cat was not.

With a sudden shot of adrenaline, she bolted upright and scrambled over toward the beaver lodge, eagerly forming an ordered list of questions at the forefront of her thoughts. So excited was Curiosity to finally take this moment that all the other red flags about sharp teeth and claws and murder investigations went completely ignored.

Arriving at the pile of mud and sticks, she plopped herself down on the ground - oops, right into the mud, dammit... - queued up the list of questions she'd prepared, raised her hand, and…?

...and what?

What am I supposed to do now? she asked herself, frozen in place. Just...knock on the pile of mud and sticks? Hello, mister demon cat, I would like to ask why you're trying to murder us all, and also are you related to the creepy cat from the story my asshat of a cousin told me earlier today?

Maeva must have sat like that for a solid minute, letting the mud cake right up on her pants, one hand poised and ready to knock all the while. There had to be a "right" way to do this. But, as Curiosity helpfully pointed out, the situation would never be approached at all if she didn't say something, anything, to get the Cat's attention here and now. If he was even still in there, that is...

She nodded. Cleared her throat. Breathed in. Breathed out.

And she spoke.

"...what's new, pussycat?"

Before she could even curse herself for her choice of opening dialogue, she heard a response, in the haughty, velvet, masculine voice she'd been expecting.

"...you can speak?"

She blinked, then stuttered as she juggled with a response. "...I-I should be asking you that! How come we can talk to each other?"

There was a pause almost long enough to be considered insulting before the Cat responded with, "...perhaps you're smarter than either of us estimated."

"Oh...th...thanks…?" She narrowed her eyes at the lodge, then remembered the Cat couldn't see her, and probably didn't understand human body language anyway. "Uh...so, Cat, I wanted to ask you a question."

Silence.

"...why are you attacking us humans?"

"...I felt threatened," came the reply, dry and brittle. "Wouldn't you have done the same?"

Maeva shrugged. "We weren't going to hurt you...well, I wasn't, anyway."

"You shouldn't have expected ME to know that," the Cat said, its tone finely harmonized somewhere between bitter menace and arrogant self-superiority. "...which human are you, anyway?"

"I'm the girl."

A sniff. "That doesn't answer my question."

"Huh? Y-you know, the girl…" she explained, putting her hands out as she tried to conjure up a better image of herself without referring to specific body parts - or the lack thereof. "...the one who just...screamed and fell to the ground and...was generally kinda useless."

There came a slow groan of recognition. "...the human I met when my sky box fell back to the ground?"

She paused. Then realized. "Y-yeah! That one. That's me."

"...oh. You…". Maeva pictured the Cat pausing to lick his paw here. "I don't like you."

The sheer disdain and dismissal in his tone was enough to make Maeva realize that little else on the planet cuts deeper than the feeling of being rejected by a cat, especially since cats can't speak to explain why you're being rejected. But when Cats CAN talk, the pain of rejection turns into the anger of offense, and the demand for an explanation.

"...well, what the hell then?" she demanded, throwing a hand into the air. "Why don't you like me? What did I ever do to you?"

"I'm not obligated to like anyone if I so please," the Cat huffed. "Besides, you stole my house, so it's only natural that I not like you."

"YOUR house?" she puffed back, quickly becoming more indignant than she wanted the Cat to see her. "Buddy, I got news for you. My family's been living in that house for fifteen years, and we've NEVER owned a cat!"

"You're becoming hysterical," the Cat replied with a sigh. "Get out of my new house and leave me alone."

Maeva raised a finger to continue, then switched gears, "...your…? What, now you think Mister Bellingham's lodge is your house, too?"

"You stole MY house," the Cat repeated, clearly annoyed now. "There's a big wind coming soon and I'm in need of shelter, so I'll be living here tonight…".

"...and ONLY tonight," he added, ominously.

Maeva opened her mouth to respond, then realized what he might have meant by that. "So...a-are you going to...kill us?"

Another long pause. Then, "...do you think I can't?"

Maeva gulped. She'd never realized how bad she was at taking threats when they weren't coming from someone like Uncle Joe. "...I...I really would like it, if you wouldn't…".

"Then get out of my house."

There was no mistaking the threat in his voice. She let the words hang there, the ambient sounds of the autumn breeze and distant falling pine cones filling the space she might otherwise have used to reply to him. That was it, the final word in the conversation. No response she could come up with would change the outcome at this point. The die had been cast.

Then I'd better take a moment to look at my cards, she thought grimly. I have to prepare...I have to warn everyone...I have to spill the beans on the fact that I talk to Cats out loud and honestly believe they're talking back to me, telling me they're going to murder my entire family.

...and THEN I'll have to figure out a payment plan for the therapist they'll stick me with in the process.

She sighed, then pulled herself up to her feet wiping the mud off her jeans. She cast one final sideways glance at Mister Bellingham's lodge. "Goodbye, Cat."

There was no response. She hadn't expected one anyway. She shuffled her way back over to the landing bank, picked up the longest, fattest branch she could find at her feet, and without another moment's delay, climbed right into the old, rotten boat, still waiting patiently in the still water by the island's edge.

The whole thing was damp and disgusting and made unsettling creaking noises, but for all that, it still held together in the shape of a boat. Good craftsmanship was good craftsmanship, after all. She deftly used the branch as a paddle, making her way slowly around the island and back toward the dock.

This is bad, she told herself, nervously chewing her mental fingernails. Everything is bad. Everything suddenly became about murder. Some evil spirit Cat is gonna kill your entire family, unless your nut-brained cousin kills it first, and Mother Nature is sending her storm into battle tonight, which, thankfully, probably won't kill anyone, but I probably just jinxed it by thinking that. It's the rule of threes, Maeva, and yours are all coming up strikes. You're screwed.

...yeah, maybe I am screwed. But I can't go down without a fight, right? It's not over until it's over. There's still one lifeline I can call on. My secret weapon. The ace up my sleeve.

She frowned. Well...it's more like a wild card that could either level the entire playing field, or blow up right in my face. But I really can't think of a better idea, so…

...I really hope I catch Mom in a good mood.


	8. This Part Never Works In Cartoons

"Oh for god's sake, stop fiddling with it and just leave it alone! We'll do this later."

In any conversation, no matter what the topic, by default, Mom's voice was always the authority. If you questioned Mom, you questioned the Law. And the Law, while generally quite fair and balanced, could be ruthless when questioned, especially when questioned by someone totally inexperienced in its inner workings and subtle nuances.

"You sure? Swear to heaven, s'like you gotta do everything the hard way. You won't even accept the little comforts in life."

And if Mom's voice was the Law, then Uncle Joe's voice was the Tinkerer, the one-man quality assurance team whose job was to try in every possible way to break a conversation before carrying it out normally. He served as the final checkpoint before you committed to an action; listening to him question every tiny detail helped reassure you that yes, you were making the choice you wanted to make.

Put those two voices in a conversation though, (and maybe apply a couple of beers to the voice of the Law), and Uncle Joe went from Quality Assurance to Public Disturbance. Reacting to Public Disturbances is generally how laws were created in the Giroux household.

"Don't make me repeat myself, Joe," Mom warned, glowering at him from her yes-quite-comfortable-in-fact place on the futon. Despite the cool air, she was dressed down in a simple undershirt and sweatpants. "What you call comforts, and what I call comforts, might be two very different comforts."

"Clearly," Joe snorted. "You may think that booze is doin' you a comfort, but don't be surprised if it one day up 'n backfires on ya."

"Shut up before I make a suggestion about you and that screwdriver in your hand."

Joe shot her a dirty look, then sensed a change in the atmosphere coming from the front door. "...Maeva, when'd you get back?"

"Just now," Maeva replied, giving a timid wave from across the room. "Am I interrupting something dramatic and dysfunctional?"

"Of course not," Mom answered, before Uncle Joe could. "Nothing important, anyway. Your Uncle Joe was just about to step outside to stop talking about our generator and resume worrying about his precious tractor."

Uncle Joe licked his lips and held up a finger. "That's a bald-faced lie, and you know it. I will not stand here and be slandered in front of your daughter."

Maeva raised an eyebrow. Perhaps now wasn't yet the best time to blurt out a full recount of today's madcap terror tales...

"Now, I was gonna set up the generator, so y'all might have a little power today before the storm hits," he explained, pointing to the window with the butt of the screwdriver. "But apparently your mother thinks that's 'unnecessary'."

"All I said was that we should save the generator for AFTER the storm," Mom said in her defense. "It's more efficient, you'll get way better bang for your buckshot that way."

"That ain't even the right euphemism," he retorted, a big indignantly. "And I'm just tryin' to give ya somethin' to do. Help ya be productive instead of layin' on your butt all day, chuggin' down alcohol!"

Mom eloquently burped back at him, supported by a quiet golf clap from her new audience.

That's right Mom, you shut him down and you shut him down quickly, Maeva cheered silently. The sooner you get rid of Uncle Joe, the sooner we can get down to the real business at hand: MY problems. Wow, that sounds pretty damn selfish when I think it out loud to myself…but, then again, these are some pretty serious problems I got here. If the Cat really IS planning to murder us all, then, well, my problems are their problems too, so...!

"Look, Kelly…".

"DO NOT," Mom one decibel short of shouted, "...call me Kelly. I have NEVER liked being called Kelly, and I know I've told you this before."

"But you're fine with 'Kel'?" Uncle Joe replied, shaking his head. "I told YOU, I don't like callin' you that. That's a boy's name, you ain't no boy."

"You say that like it matters," she said, twirling a finger in the air as she threw it right back. "What DOES matter is that I said I don't want you to call me Kelly, just like I also said I don't want you to turn on the generator yet. Got all that, Joey?"

Uncle Joey frowned, but he must have realized the point on the edge of her words. Not that it would stop him, of course. Maybe slow him down a little. Well, a little MORE, anyway.

Ugh, there's gotta be SOMETHING I can do to help here, Maeva thought, chewing on her lip as she continued watching the battle. But what could I say that'd get Uncle Joe's attention? Other than salty four-letter words, of course. Should I tell him that something bad happened to Nash? That might work...but then I'd have to explain WHAT happened, and I don't wanna chance him getting all hopped up about it. God knows one hopped-up redneck is bad enough, but put two in the same room and it's only a matter of time before something catches fire...

"Y'know what," Uncle Joe stepped in, still desperately hoping he might get to claim some tiny shred of authority in this situation, "...why don't we just let the kid settle this one?"

...oh?

Mom frowned, then glanced over at Maeva, then brushed him away. "...whatever gets you off my ass the quickest."

Bingo.

Uncle Joe nodded smugly. "Go get a coin, Maeva."

On command, she obediently fished a penny out of her pocket, praying the dirt still smeared on her pants wouldn't rub off on her hand in the process. With a flip and a twirl, she caught it between two fingers and flashed it to Uncle Joe. She should have been hurrying the situation along, but she'd been working hard on her coin tricks lately and wouldn't dare miss an opportunity to show them off.

Sadly, her uncle remained unimpressed. "Good. Now since I'm a gentleman of sorts, why don't you go ahead and call heads or tails, Kelly--I...I mean, 'Kel'."

Mom grimaced his pronunciation on that last L, but reluctantly placed her can back on the table in front of her. "Fine."

Uncle Joe wearily turned again to Maeva. "Whenever you're ready, kiddo."

As she nodded, Maeva's plan successfully congealed inside her head. All she needed to do was make sure Uncle Joe won the coin toss, no matter what. She might have been going against the Law, but drastic emergencies call for drastic measures. Sorry, Mom…

With a flick of the wrist and a flip of the thumb, the coin went airborne in a perfect spiral.

"Tails."

Maeva snatched the coin from the air and plopped it against the back of her other hand with a flourish, lifting up just a bit to peek at the sex of the coin.

"Heads," she lied.

"Dammit Maeva," Mom grumbled, playfully. "I was counting on you."

Uncle Joe grinned victoriously, doing some showboating of his own with the screwdriver. "Well that settles that, then. Trust me, it'll be better this way. You'll be glad to have somethin' productive to do before it's time to hunker down and ride out the storm."

And it'll give YOU a convenient place to plug in while you cook up some harebrained scheme to get your tractor out of the mud, right? was what Maeva thought.

"Cool, I wanted to get on the computer anyway so I could tell my friends I'm gonna be MIA for a few days," was what she said.

Mom blinked, then raised an eyebrow. "...what's MIA mean again?"

"...missing in action," Maeva replied, slowly. "You didn't know that?"

"Oh...no, of course I knew THAT, I thought maybe you were using it like some new weirdo acronym that meant something…uh, 'teenaged'...".

Mom glanced over at Maeva, who transferred the glance to Uncle Joe, where it looped back in a circle a few times before Joe finally took it with him. "...a'right then, I'll have the power on in just a few. Sit tight, ladies."

And just like that, he walked right out of the room, leaving the ladies be. It was perhaps the first thing gone right since Maeva had started keeping count. So, now...

"Hey Mom...can we talk?"

A sudden jolt of terror flashed across Mom's face. "...it's not the sex talk, is it? Cause I am not nearly prepared enough for that right now."

"Nah, I'm good on embarrassing bodily stuff," she replied, making a move to sit down before remembering the mud on her butt. She leaned against the wall instead. "I do pay attention in health class, y'know."

"Thank god someone does."

"Yeah…" Maeva chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment before continuing. "...but anyway, I wanted to talk to you about...well, something happened while me and Nash were down at the lake."

The terror that had crossed Mom's face was quickly replaced by a red-hot flame burning beneath the surface. "...what did that asshat do to you?"

"Oh, no, not like THAT," Maeva assured her, already regretting her phrasing and tone. "I mean, I know Nash is kind of a d-bag and he can be a little scary when he's mad, but no, it definitely wasn't like that."

Mom grunted and took a very necessary swig from her can.

"No, what happened...down at the lake…" she paused to allow the words to untangle themselves in her mind, to try and present the facts in the clearest way possible. "He...kind of abandoned me and made me row back in a rotten old pile of junk we found drifting after the Cat came back and jacked up his arm out on Mister Bellingham's island and I swear I heard it talk--".

"Maeva," Mom interrupted, pinching the bridge of her nose. "...if you were a news anchor, you would've been fired on your first day. I'm gonna need you to stop, back the truck up, and tell me, in complete, individualized sentences, one fact about each stop on the crazy road trip your words just took me on."

Biting down again on her lip, Maeva took a deep breath. She hadn't even realized how much had already happened today, or how insane it might all sound out of context, especially to someone who hadn't been reading about her exploits all the while. Unfortunately, she'd never been much good at outlining oral presentations in school, so a disjointed explanation would simply have to suffice.

"Okay," she began, re-prioritizing the facts. "Don't tell Uncle Joe, but Nash got really jacked up when we were out on the island."

"Jacked up how?" Mom asked. "He get bit by that beaver?"

"No…". A pause, followed by another deep breath. "...remember that Cat?"

"We've never had a cat…" she replied, scratching her head. "...oh wait, you mean the one that jacked up your Dad."

"I know it sounds crazy...but I'm POSITIVE we saw the same one out on the island."

Mom's eyebrow cocked, and she again set the can aside and held back another belch. "It doesn't sound CRAZY...but are you really sure it was the SAME one?"

"I know what I saw," she answered with a nod. "...and what I heard."

Blink. "...heard?"

Maeva leaned in closer, glancing around for spies as she lowered her voice. "...the Cat spoke to me."

Again, blink. Mom didn't reply this time, but seemed to be reading Maeva's expression very closely...or at least as closely as someone on her third beer after spending several hours with a pushy redneck brother-in-law.

"...I'm not crazy," Maeva added, for good measure.

Mom snapped back awake and pulled her head up. "...never said you were. Just that you were a bad reporter."

Maeva snorted and crossed her arms. Should've known better...this wasn't how it worked in cartoons either. Adults never take you seriously when you try to tell the stranger-than-fiction.

"So you heard the Cat talk to you…" Mom continued, now looking off into the distance. "And you understood what it was saying?"

"...yeah?" she replied, hesitantly. She'd expected a more demeaning response than that…

Mom turned to face her again. "What did you hear it say?"

It was Maeva's turn to pause and blink. This wasn't standard protocol. Adults weren't supposed to believe or encourage you to tell the stranger-than-fiction...it was like they were having an actual conversation. "...uh. Well. It, uh...kinda told me to get out of his house."

She frowned as Mom chuckled. "Were you standing in his living room when he said it?"

"Mom, this is serious!"

Mom held up a hand as she recomposed herself. "Sorry. Go on."

She huffed, standing up straight and pulling her hands apart to add hand motions for emphasis. "He meant all of us. This house. Our house! And he said it like it was HIS house, and WE were intruding! It's weird, cause I could've sworn I heard him talking when we met him last night too, right before he ffffuu--er, fricked up Dad's face!"

She watched as Mom's expression equalized back toward the somber end of the spectrum and she became distant again, processing the words. It was rare to ever see her like this, with a face so solemn and contemplative. Mom had always lived in the moment, and never seemed to have to think at all. There was a certain nobility to this face, always curtained behind the playful, freewheeling mask she preferred to wear. Moments like these reminded Maeva of who Mom really was.

But there was still a conversation to be had, and Maeva couldn't risk Curiosity getting bored. "I really am not crazy, I swear."

Mom looked up, the mask returning. "Weren't you listening to me? I never once said that you were crazy...just that you really, REALLY suck as a reporter."

Maeva sighed in response, slumping forward with her hands at her sides.

"Y'know, I think things talk too," Mom added, giving her a half-smile. "Everything can probably talk if you know how to listen to it."

She received a skeptical eyebrow in response.

"I used to think so, anyway," she continued, pausing for a swallow. "If you've got even just a smidgen of imagination in you, you can probably imagine what ANYTHING might say, if it were to ever just start talking one day."

"...Mom, are you drunk?"

"TIP-SY," she replied, sticking out her tongue. "There's a difference."

...well crap, now I can't tell if she's being serious or not, Maeva thought, cocking her head. I mean, she is actively drinking a beer, but she's also speaking with total clarity and is on the verge of actually making sense. Should I just...roll with it? Does she really believe me? Why does it look like she can read my thoughts right now?

"I really do believe you, by the way," Mom read her thoughts. "There's definitely weirder things in life than talking cats. They actually score pretty low on the weirdness scale if you ask me."

"...really?"

"'course they do," she continued, taking another swig. "Humans have been imagining talking animals for years. Don't you remember the old stories I used to tell you about the age of Myths and all that?"

"I didn't forget!" Maeva ushered in quickly, eager to appeal to the heritage her mother had been trying to pass down to her for years now.

"In every Myth I've ever heard, all the animals used to be able to talk to humans. And most of them had something to teach us, or conveniently explained the universe to us before we figured out what science was. Literally every animal was capable of talking to us."

Mom made a face here. "...except deer. They've always been stupid as hell, I swear to god…".

She turned again to Maeva. "You gettin' all this, kid? You'd better be taking notes, cause oral stories are just about all we got left to our name as people."

"I didn't forget," she repeated, softer, but just as meaningfully. "I just...remember some of the stories better than other ones."

"Yeah? Name one of their albums."

"...the one about the woman who married a bear cracks me up every time."

"HA! Always loved that one too..." Mom said with a snort. "We sure had a lot of stories about ladies marrying things they shouldn't marry…cautionary tales up the wazoo, eh? Symbolism much?"

She received a snicker in response.

Mom swallowed, then frowned, then chuckled again. "Don't take that the wrong way. I love your dad and you know I do. Just 'cause my ancestors were Natives and his were the ones that killed 'em all doesn't mean we can't still find love in the here and now."

"...I...didn't imply taking any of it that way," Maeva answered, half-smiling awkwardly.

"Hm?" A sudden shiver brought Mom out of her ramble. "I got sidetracked, sorry. What the hell were we talking about again? I gotta find a way to bring this conversation full circle now."

"I was telling you about the Cat that sliced Dad up," she supplied helpfully.

"Oh yeah, right…" Mom patted her chest, politely excusing another burp. "So, uh...basically, if traditional stories have taught us anything, it's that women can marry whoever they want to, whether it's a bear, or the sun, or even a white man. My ancestors are dead, they can't control me. The only thing that matters is what I want, for me, today!"

Maeva felt a sort of fire burning behind her words. Not burning with vengeance, nor with the toxic smoke of bitter regret, but a fire of...affirmation, maybe. Mom seemed to genuinely believe in what she was saying, whatever it was she actually WAS saying...probably just that she was happy with her life's decisions or something.

And yet…

"Not like I can go back and change any of it now, anyway…".

Maeva gave her a strange look.

"I'm just sayin'..." Mom followed up, pointing a finger at her. "It's all happened now, I can't go back in time and un-happen it to see if maybe there was a way to get a happier ending. What could have been...what WOULD have been...you don't get to go back and choose that. You only get to work with what's there NOW. You following me, kid?"

"Uh…? You kinda stopped making sense a while ago."

"We don't get to choose 'what if'," she said, leaning forward and getting serious. "We only get out of life what we put INTO life, but we only start with what life gives us in the first place. The stage is already set. The only thing we get to do is react to what's already there, because everything in life will already be set up the way it is before we even get to it!"

And that was that. Mom had spoken the words into existence, and like ancient wisdoms chiseled onto convenient stone tablets, the words were indelibly tattooed upon the skin of the universe. Those words were Law now.

And after a moment of respectful awe, Maeva quietly cleared her throat. "...so...the Cat…?"

Still frozen in the epic pose of creation, Mom blinked, then leaned back, immediately resuming her carefree demeanor. "The Cat? He's your circumstance. Our circumstance, I guess. He did what he did because all the pieces that make up our universe were there when he made his decision. He didn't get to set his own stage, only react to it, same as we do to him. Equal but opposing forces acting on the same object. You do science in school, right?"

"Oh...yeah, I guess…". Huh. Who would have guessed that out of all possible scenarios in which science homework could have been useful, metaphor would be the first one Maeva came across?

"You're hearing the Cat talk to you because you're starting to understand stuff like that," Mom continued, with a yawn. "So...take that as you will, I guess. That answer your question? ...whatever your question was?"

Maeva took a moment to reflect on the words, then decided to lock them away for later. "...well, you've given me some stuff to think about, at least."

"Good," Mom sighed with relief as she slumped back down on the futon. "Being the wise old Native woman takes a lot out of me. Wake me up when your dipstick Uncle figures out how to get the generator turned on."

All at once, right on cue, every light bulb in the room flickered back into being, flooding life back into the room. Mom just sighed again, turned over, and waved her daughter away, calling after her, "...and wash your pants, for god's sake. You look like you had explosive diarrhea or something."

As Maeva walked away to her room, equal parts confused and mortified, the only profound thought born from that conversation that ended up sticking with her for the rest of the day was: "...so, wait, is it NOT totally racist to attribute my animal talking skills to my First Nations heritage after all?"


	9. Oh What The Heck, Throw In A Train Wreck

The internet!

A massive criss-crossing spiderweb network of meticulously controlled electrical charges stored in teeny tiny silicon boxes, each individual node storing a single pattern of charges representing a letter or a number or some other individual value within a sprawling library of raw data! An instantaneous connection to any conceivable parcel of information imaginable by the human brain! The pinnacle cross-platform achievement of microtechnology, electrical pattern transmission, and the constant human desire for interaction! The very core essence of science fiction itself!

...what, you're surprised that science fiction exists out in the backwoods, where people literally use chainsaws for their intended purpose instead of for murdering people and chopping up zombies? Well screw you too, man.

Maeva chuckled to herself and clicked 'Post'. She'd been idly surfing the massive criss-crossing spiderweb network since the generator had come up, waiting with an open ear for the moment she could no longer hear people milling around in the rest of the house. The opportunity of perfect privacy, as it were. She was almost more afraid of having to explain her internet browsing to her family than she was of the Cat himself.

She cracked her knuckles and pulled up a new search tab, pausing to think up something harmless that she could quick-switch to should someone sneak up behind her. As if coincidence were magic, the auto-complete feature had already suggested "cats".

She puckered her lips for a moment, staring back at the blinking cursor. That wasn't really too suspicious for her to search for, right? It wasn't like she'd never searched for "cats" before all this. Who doesn't spend a few hours a week just watching cat videos, anyway?

But something about the word seemed different now. There was a certain menace to it whenever she whispered it out loud. Some kind of dark aura, almost. "Cats" might as well have been an ancient curse word from the dark and fiery underworld itself.

Maeva snorted. Then frowned. Then defiantly clicked the word anyway. As if she was about to let some old curse baloney get in the way of what she was really after.

...the Truth.

Throwing a quick cautionary glance over her shoulder, she scrolled through a list of news articles about cats in her area, looking for something, ANYTHING, that might illuminate her situation a little more. Maybe Nash stole his story wholesale from some old news clip before pawning it off on her…

There sure seemed to be a lot of articles about "dealing with feral cats", especially in the local news. They were more or less considered an invasive species at this point; more of a common pest than a controller of pests. But then, that was the problem, wasn't it? Cats had so few predators and controlled so many other species that, much like humans, once you introduced them to an area, they did nothing but mass multiply and expand their empire.

Further perusal of the articles broke down into the legality and widespread use of popular animal control methods. People almost seemed desperate to get rid of them, employing every method from trapping to amateur domesticating to professional rescuing to...well, maybe pretending a fourth option didn't exist would help Maeva sleep better at night…

One of the more cynical sources even said that none of these methods were actually effective at all. Trapping, except where performed by professionals, was generally outlawed due to personal safety issues - nevermind Cat safety issues, she noted. Domestication never lasted, as feral cats often went unchecked for diseases or parasites until the human home inevitably became infected as well, resulting in the cat's immediate shameful banishment. And all the nearby rescue shelters were just plain overcrowded. After all, nothing was more common than a feral cat, and after being burned on self-serve domestication, most would-be cat owners eventually evolved into would-nots.

And Maeva continued to deny the existence of the fourth method with a huff of disapproval. Some options were just not meant to be explored, as far as she was concerned. To every problem that possibly could be, there existed at least one solution that didn't involve bullets.

Yeah, try telling that to someone like Nash, she thought with a sneer. Kinda wish MY Cat was like the one in his story...completely immune to death by bullets by some random miracle of demon magic. Heh. For all I know, maybe he IS…

She leaned back in the chair, arms dangling at either side as she gazed away from the monitor for a moment to rest her eyes.

...there's still so much I don't know about my Cat. I mean, I DO know he's dangerous, like any wild animal would be, but I really don't know exactly how much he's capable of. Or how he got into the places he's gotten into so far...what was he doing in the old boat? How did he get in the balloon? Hell, how did he even get inside the house last night? Even demon magic's starting to sound like a pretty logical explanation at this point…

She took the chair for a slow spin.

Okay Maeva, she told herself, dropping into focus mode. So what if he IS a demon, then? A malevolent spirit. A monster. Well then, what two things have a childhood of reading fantasy books taught you about life? One, humans and monsters are fundamentally different, and don't understand each other to the point of being automatic enemies. And Two, no matter what happens, it's almost always the humans' fault in the first place, because humans are just naturally greedy and stupid and have guns to solve problems with.

The clock changed over to 3:00.

...so what, does that mean this whole fiasco really IS my fault somehow? She bit her lip and frowned. What the hell could I have done that would make him so angry? So vengeful? I'd never even met him before, and literally the only thing I've done to him since then is say hi! I mean sure, I get the whole "I felt threatened" thing, but there is NO WAY I deserve that cold shoulder I'm being shrugged off with. Or, y'know, the straight-up murder threats.

She angrily turned back to the monitor, glaring at the page once more as she hovered over the "close tab" button. The words reflecting back at her started to blur over the top of each other as thoughts bubbled in the forefront of her mind, each one fighting for her attention.

None of this is helpful...

Words began to blur entirely. Whenever she tried to focus on them, they suddenly vanished.

The thoughts were like a crowd of voices ringing in her ears.

Glare from the screen seemed to intensify.

She closed the tab, silencing the noise.

And the second she did, in the afterimage left behind, she saw the words "train wreck" clear as day. And something in the back of her mind had, for some reason, flagged it with a big red X. She quickly re-opened the tab, scrolled down and clicked the link to the old story.

"CAT SURVIVES MYSTERIOUS TRAIN WRECK"

"The popular VIA Rail luxury train was found violently derailed near Kelowna late Thursday evening. Rescue crews were dispatched immediately, but all 108 passengers were pronounced dead on the scene. The cause of the derailment is still unknown.

However, one courageous crew member was able to locate and rescue a single survivor; a tabby cat found in a pet carrier that miraculously made it through the crash undamaged. The crew member, who has asked to remain anonymous, reported that he heard "an unmistakable meowing sound like the cry of a frightened child" among the noise of the ongoing firefight.

The cat was registered to a man named Cameron Bowman, a passenger on the train that fateful night. Officials say they were able to reconnect the cat with his now-widowed wife, Alba Bowman, who lived only a few km away from the crash site, in Kelowna."

Below the text was a picture of an older woman...holding...a cat…

...no. No way.

But it was. It so definitely was.

Cradling in this woman's arms was none other than the demon Cat - HER Cat - in all its mysterious, terrible glory. Same smoky, green-rimmed eyes, same splotches down its back, same toasted marshmallow colors...she could even FEEL the intimidating aura through the picture. And, in the most typical of creepy cat fashion, it seemed to be looking straight at her.

She listened to the sound of leaves skittering along in the wind outside.

...no.

This is a load of bull, Maeva reassured herself, cracking her neck. There is absolutely no frickin' way that's the same Cat. I don't care that it looks perfectly identical to mine, or that it causes rampant destruction in its wake, or that it came from literally the same town as my school. It's impossible. Stupidly impossible!

An idea flashed behind her eyes.

What was the date on the article? She squinted, glanced left, counted on her fingers. Seventeen! Seventeen years ago! And look, the Cat in that picture is already fully grown. No Cat ever lives that long. There, that proves it! This is obviously nothing more than dumb coincidence!

Maeva leaned back, crossed her arms, and nodded smugly...then slowly glanced back down at the floor.

...somehow, that still wasn't good enough. She still felt the uneasy bubbling in her guts, and the looming feeling of someone standing behind her.

And she did check over her shoulder, more out of habit than terror. No one.

...I guess demon cats don't really DO coincidence though, do they? she continued, bitterly. What few pieces I have are falling too neatly into place for any other explanation.

Suddenly, a click.

The pieces! She had a new piece to work with! A sort of desperate, long shot of a piece, but since when does that ever stop a plucky young heroine in a fantasy story, right?

What was her name again? Maeva quickly copied the name and pasted it into another search window. Her eyes snapped from location to location instantly, synapses firing thoughts at speeds that might almost have rivalled the amazing internet itself.

There!

Alba Bowman, age 69, Abbotsford BC. A photo of a graying lady with splotchy orange skin and a face mapped with regal-looking contours and creases. Her hair was short and spiked, and the smile on her lips matched the smile in her eyes. She seemed happy.

Good thing too, because the profile in question was featured on a dating website and decorated with flaming hearts.

On the edge of hearing, she heard the front door squeak on its hinges. With lightning-quick finger reflexes, she switched windows and blocked the screen from potential shoulder spies with her body, listening for the inevitable approach of footsteps with bright red ears.

...but the footsteps never came.

She dared peek behind her. Silence.

Welp...better act quickly anyway, she nodded. Alright then, how do I send you a message on here...?

Click. Click. Back button. Click...? Frustrated sigh.

What, I absolutely gotta have an account to do anything on this site? she flustered to herself, keenly checking over her shoulder yet again. Well, can't fight the system, I guess...better just get this over with.

Fortunately, creating an account was the ONLY thing required, no need to surreptitiously dig out either parent's credit card or create yet another throwaway email account for verification. She scoffed at the "enter your birthdate" page, doing the math in her head so that she would appear nineteen instead of fourteen. Eighteen seemed a little too obvious.

Oh god, I can just picture it now, she snickered, filling in the required info with the precision and professionalism of a teenager who'd all but done this for a living. This poor old widow finally gets a response on her dating profile, only to find it's some nineteen-year-old wannabe artist asking her about some cat she probably hasn't seen in years and, I would imagine, would prefer to never speak of again. Heh...sorry, granny.

She frowned, refreshing the page. I still can't send her a message? Is she on private or something? The button shows up on all the shirtless dude pages...wait a second. Oh my god. You actually have to go in and change your...erm, "preferences" before you can send a message to another woman? What is this, some kind of "hetero only unless you're kinky" Christian dating site? No, it's comic GOLD, that's what it is!

She felt a jolt in her spine as she straightened up and looked over her shoulder again. Crap! Don't get distracted, Maeva! You can worry about whether you're actually gay or not later, when there's no chance of the Morality Police sneaking up behind you to catch you in the act.

She quickly scrolled through the options page, blush burning bright atop her cheekbones. Oh god, I can't stop picturing granny's expression now...she wakes up to a notification from a dating website, gets all excited that someone might finally be seeing her for the silver fox she knows she's always been, only to find it's some random college art lesbian asking her about the demon cat that killed her husband seventeen years ago...god, that's SO going in the sketchbook!

A muffled conversation seemed to be getting underway outside. A decidedly loud muffled conversation. A little voice named Curiosity suggested it would be prudent to get in on THAT action as quickly as possible. No more time to waste.

She hastily typed up a message, hit send, logged out, cleared the browser history, and, just to be safe, visited several Bible websites to cover her tracks before stepping out. That ought to at least keep Uncle Joe off her butt…

And speaking of Uncle Joe, his voice was definitely present in the ongoing conversation. No mistaking that American hick accent. In fact, there was enough redneck in there to suggest that Nash was present...which probably meant he was the star of the conversation.

Oh god, what if he'd blabbed too? She grit her teeth and pulled her hoodie back on, followed by a pair of jeans not caked in mud.

The breeze continued to pick up even more as she stepped outside, slicing right through her armor. The clouds looming right on the edge of the treescape promised that the prescribed storm couldn't be more than a couple of hours away now. These might be the last normal breaths of fresh air she'd be getting until after it passed…

...had Maeva been paying attention, she might have used her razor-sharp cloud-watching skills to pick out the shape of the cumulonimbus surrounding the setting sun as the unmistakeable glowing eye of a cat on the prowl.


	10. Nails & Dynamite

"Nash, what in the hell are you doin' with that thing, anyway?"

There was an alarmed, almost fearful accusation in the stresses of Uncle Joe's words. Either Nash had finally gone and crossed the line, or Uncle Joe was genuinely afraid of the monster he'd brought into this world.

"What, the cast?" Nash asked, innocently gesturing to his bandaged arm, wound tightly with a length of old gauze probably long past its prime. "My arm got a little banged up, so I took care of it with the first aid kit out in the shed. Thought you'd'a been proud of me for bein' so resourceful."

"Don't you play dumb with me, boy," Uncle Joe warned, accosting him with the dreaded outstretched finger - no, not THAT one. "You know damn well what I'm talkin' about."

"Language, Joe," Mom put in sarcastically. Still, she didn't seem too pleased with the current state of affairs either.

And that's when Maeva, finally making her way 'round the truck parked in the driveway beside which the argument had been taking place, saw what was in Nash's other hand.

"Oh right, the gun," Nash said plainly, as if he'd forgotten entirely what kind of reaction waving a long-barrelled rifle around at people generally produces. "Don't worry, it ain't loaded or nothin'. Not yet, anyway…".

Mom repeated the words to herself, squinting back at him. Uncle Joe scoffed and took a step forward instead. "That ain't what I'm worried about. First I wanna know where in the hell it came from!"

"Whoa, easy dad," Nash said, taking a short step back. "I brought it with us when you picked me up in the truck. Didn't know how long we'd be gone, so I decided to come prepared."

"Gimme that," Uncle Joe replied as he grabbed the barrel, making certain to keep it pointed skyward. "I don't remember authorizin' you to bring my gun out here on your own accord. This ain't a toy, you know!"

"Why the hell do you even HAVE a shotgun, Joe?" Mom asked, pointedly keeping herself halfway in front of Maeva.

"'s for emergencies only," he replied over his shoulder, through grit teeth. "So this had better be an emergency, boy, or I swear to heaven I'll smack you 'cross the lips with my own hand."

"Dad, please!" Nash replied, almost shrinking away from him, despite having several inches on him in height. "I ain't stupid, you know I wouldn't just whip it out in front of the girls like this 'less I had a good reason!"

He probably thought Maeva wouldn't catch his subtle dirty joke. He was wrong.

"...so?" Uncle Joe demanded, hand still firmly gripped around the barrel of the rifle. "What's your so-called good reason then?"

Nash took a deep breath and stood up straight. It was hard to imagine him needing a breath for confidence's sake like this. In everything Nash ever did, he'd always exuded an air of perfectly carefree bravado, like the battle was over and the world already belonged to him, and he was free to act with absolute impunity.

Seeing that streak of self-doubt and fear gave Maeva a glimmer of hope that she might one day be able to use that against him.

"Look at my arm," he finally said, relinquishing control of the gun and holding out his bandaged appendage. "There's some real bloody cuts under all this. Look, you can see it seepin' through already. That's real life battle damage I endured today when me and Maeva was down at the lake."

Uncle Joe turned to cast an inquisitive glance at her, but ended up meeting the eyes of Mom, who was still pointedly putting herself in between Maeva and the gun. Hesitantly, suspiciously, he asked, "...what happened down at the lake?"

Nash placed a hand on his injured forearm, exhaling deeply, like a bull about to charge. "You know that little pussycat that ripped up Uncle Jean's face?"

"You mean that feral, probably-rabid tom cat," Mom corrected him, coldly. Her eyes were completely frosted over with distrust. She'd never exactly been quiet about her sheer hatred of firearms over the years, and seeing one not only in her own driveway, but within proximity of her daughter, and being wielded by someone she trusted less than the horoscopes printed in the local newspaper...well, Maeva could only hope there were a few more bandages out in that tool shed, for Nash's sake.

"Yeah, that one," Nash replied, dropping his voice to match her coldness. "Me an' Maeva found it down by the lake."

"You got your arm torn up by a wild cat and you wrapped it up in old bandages instead comin' to tell me first?!" his dad shouted. It seemed to not occur to him that he was shouting and waving a gun around, and that he was damn lucky the house was so far away from any neighbors. "The hell's the matter with you?!"

"Let me kill it, dad," Nash pleaded. "That thing's a menace, and it gone and made things personal with me. If there's anyone can put it down, you know it's me."

NO! Maeva screamed, or at least she imagined she did, on Uncle Joe's behalf. What the hell are you thinking, you CAN'T just murder the Cat! I won't let you! You can't do ANYTHING until I figure out what the hell is going on here first!

Uncle Joe grimaced, still holding the gun away at arm's length. "Don't be stupid, Nash. We didn't come out here to hunt tom cats. And you're already in deep shit for packin' the gun after I specifically told you it was for emergencies only. You hear me?"

"Dad…" he protested, splaying his hands despite the obvious pain in his arm. "You gotta understand where I'm comin' from with this. That cat jacked up my arm somethin' fierce. Wasn't even my fault to begin with. I been wronged…".

"But now," he continued through clenched teeth and clenched fists, "I got the means to retaliate. I can go out there and set the record straight, show 'em what happens when you play dirty with me. Ain't I earned that, dad? Ain't I paid my dues and earned my right for justice?"

Uncle Joe remained stone silent. His face was emotionless, a blank mask designed to hide all the rapid-fire internal debate going on inside his brain. He didn't move. He didn't blink. For a second, Maeva almost thought he might be taking Nash's proposal seriously.

"...well, I can't say you don't have a point there, son," he finally responded, still hesitantly.

...wait, WHAT?!

Mom's sentiments exactly. "Joe, you can't be serious! I will not have a goddamn TEENAGER out firing a gun on my property!"

"YOUR property? I thought you were rentin' this place," Uncle Joe replied, over his shoulder. "And please stay outta this, Kelly, this is business 'tween me and my son."

"Oh, is that right?" she snorted, taking a step closer. "You're in MY world now, Joe. I get to make the rules, especially when it comes to teenage murder weapon usage. Who do you think you are, anyway?"

"Shhh," he insisted. "I DO have a plan, just hear me--"

"If you've got a plan, then you'd best just spit it out," Mom cut him off, standing in his face now. "You don't have to be big and dramatic about everything, you goddamn nut!"

Uncle Joe seemed to be biting the inside of his cheek, holding himself back from "saying anything regrettable" as he countered Mom's death glare. But, thick as the brick he was, no one could ever match the obstinance of someone like Mom. She was, after all, the Law. Uncle Joe finally took a deep breath and broke his gaze.

"...fine, then." He turned to face her, holding the gun pointed downward now as he lowered his voice. "Here's the deal. Nash ain't one to give up easy on somethin' once he gets it in his head. You prob'ly know that already."

"I do."

Maeva took note of Nash's grim expression behind Uncle Joe.

"Then you also know that if I try an' forbid him from doin' this, he's gonna try an' do it anyway!" Joe continued, gun pointing haphazardly whenever his hand motions did their thing. "Come hell or high water, he's gonna TRY, and there's nothin' I can do to stop him! I can't just tie him up to a chair and make him sit still once he's got a light bulb on in that attic!"

"Want me to do it for you?" Mom challenged, eyes on the boy with a light bulb in his attic.

"You do that and he'll end up cooped up in the house with us."

Her angry glance snapped back to Uncle Joe, but this time her mouth was hesitant. She seemed to be mentally recalculating her decision. The prospects of sitting together in a room with Nash for hours on end while the storm raged on outside were already unappetizing enough as it was, but things would be much worse if he was going to spend the entire time griping about not getting his precious kill while still within reach of a real shotgun…

Not that it would be much better if he DID kill it, Maeva added grimly. He wouldn't even give a flip that he was killing a Cat that had miraculously survived a balloon crash, much less a Cat THAT COULD TALK. He'd just treat that like it was some gold star bonus tacked onto his kill record. High score, achievement unlocked.

She shook herself awake in time to hear Mom's verdict, which amounted to an astoundingly concise "...well shit."

Uncle Joe sighed, shaking his head in face of vulgar bodily profanity, then turned to Nash once more. "Alright then boy, guess you're gonna get your way after all."

Nash nodded solemnly. It was hard not to imagine him gloating like crazy on the inside though.

"You remember everything I taught you about how to shoot safely?" Uncle Joe added with a sniff.

An elephant never forgets, Maeva thought with an eye roll.

"And you brought ammo too?"

"I brought a couple shells," Nash replied, pulling two from his pocket with his good hand. "I took out the birdshot cause you told me not to waste the good stuff. I was just gonna load it with...somethin' else."

Uncle Joe nodded approvingly, then raised an eyebrow. "...like what kinda 'somethin' else'?"

"I dunno, I was just gonna load 'em with whatever I could find when we got out here." He glanced down at the ground to scan for ideas. "Pebbles, maybe?"

"Absolutely not," came the reply. "Pebbles are gonna ding that barrel all to hell, and I'll whup your ass if you get this thing damaged while you're out there playin'...wildlife vigilante or whatever it is you're tryin' to be."

"So I'll just use somethin' else then, jeez," Nash continued, sourly. "I think I got some M&Ms in my pocket, can I use THEM? Or is that gonna scuff the precious barrel too?"

"...M&Ms...?" Maeva interjected, unaware she'd done so out loud.

"Yup," Nash answered, flashing her the shell. "Long as you got primer and wad, you can load just about anything that'll fit into a shell and shoot it."

"...but...M&Ms??"

"We usually do it with rock salt if we just wanna scare people off," he continued, with a snicker. "But we ain't stocked up on rock salt yet, and well...I ain't exactly intent on scarin' someone off this time."

The red warning light blinked on and off in Maeva's brain, and an argument thus ensued among her inner selves over whether or not now was the appropriate time to stop things before they escalated any further, or if she ought to ride it out until a better, sneakier opportunity to dissolve the situation undetected came along later.

And despite all this, the only thing she could think to respond with at the time was, "...you're gonna kill the Cat by shooting M&Ms at him???"

"M&Ms is fine," Uncle Joe finally said, nodding at Mom like it was indeed fine. "But you'd better hurry. That storm's gonna be kickin' in any time now. Wind's already pickin' up out here. Animals ain't stupid, Nash, it's probably already gone into a hidin' place to wait it all out."

"That's the thing, Dad," Nash replied with a smirk. "I already know where it's hidin'. Ain't gonna take long."

He turned to Maeva, death in his eyes. "...all I need is one shot."

Her arm twitched. Something about that look on his face was definitely not right. It was like something inside him had snapped; that part of his brain that prevents people from becoming a murderer. No...he'd always been a murderer, hadn't he? Now he just had the gun to do it with...

...he wasn't really going to use M&Ms, was he?

With a frustrated sigh and a toss of her hands, Mom finally gave up and sulked her way off the scene, back into the house. Uncle Joe put a hand on Nash's shoulder and looked him squarely in the eye, conveying some unspoken signal, probably about manhood and justice and overcompensation, then he too headed into the house.

...leaving Maeva alone - for the second time today - with a homicidal maniac.

...walking over toward her. Oh god.

"...I told you to stay on the island," he warned, voice dropping down into that graveyard register again. Her heart rate nearly doubled.

"...I...I was afraid I'd get attacked too…" she managed to reply, feeling the chill tiptoe its way up her spine again.

Nash spit over his shoulder. "Guess you really are a pussy willow, then. Don't matter anyway, though. I'm puttin' an end to this bullshit right here and right now."

"Nash…".

"Don't girl this up for me, Maeva," he threatened, jabbing her in the chest with his index finger. "You heard me before. I said I was gonna KILL that cat, and I meant it. It's gonna be dead. BAM, blood and brains all over the place."

His face slipped into a slimy grin. "...I ain't usin' M&Ms for ammo."

Her eyes moved down to the shotgun shell in his hand, her brain making a mental note of the chest jab and marking it as yet another little black mark beside Nash's name. He removed his other hand from his pocket and produced a handful of something that definitely wasn't M&Ms. They weren't even edible.

Nails.

"I wasn't kiddin' before," he confirmed, still grim as the reaper himself. "With the right kind of gun, you can pack ANY OL' THING into a shot shell s'long as it fits. So I figured I'd pack these shells with NAILS. Just picture that for a second...".

Maeva did picture it for a second...then blinked and looked back up at the twisted grin of vengeful pleasure on his face as she pictured what he must be picturing. She gulped and prayed she hadn't peed her pants at the sight.

"I'd love to sit here and make ya squirm some more like the pussy willow I know you are," he said, drawing himself back up to full towering height, "...but I got a schedule to keep and a storm to beat. I'mma go fill that sumbitch fulla nails at four-hunnerd meters a second, then hang his rotten ass out in my front yard so the whole nature world knows what happens when you cross me."

The voices were screaming now. They demanded she ACT, do something to put a stop to this insanity before she lost her final chance to have a life-changing adventure with a human-talking Cat just because her ass-talking cousin couldn't contain his bloodlust. She could feel Curiosity tingling in her bones and in her veins, searching for a way in so that it could take control.

But with all the other conflicting emotions and voices in there, the feeling left her utterly paralyzed. It still felt like those times when Curiosity took control, but in reverse. Like taking control to shut everything down. Like possession of a completely different nature. A different spirit.

...Fear?


	11. So Long, Nashville

The spirit of Fear…

The nature of Curiosity…

Both vie for control within the body, pulling and tugging against one another like planets in an infinite, looping binary orbit. One side will always dominate, but both sides exert a measure of control against one another. And, as with any balance of power, the dominant side can always be flipped at any moment, usually by some unforeseen external circumstance.

Thoughts like these usually stuck around in Maeva's memory, if only because she remembered the time one of her classmates had given a report on the subject. It had sounded particularly profound and interesting at the time, or at least it did until the teacher found out he had swiped the entire essay word-for-word from a game he could never shut up about.

But it was profound and interesting now, too. Maeva's dominant planet had always been, naturally, Curiosity, but for the past half-hour, the balance had been completely tipped in favor of Fear. It had only taken a slight bump from a single unforeseen external circumstance to screw everything up. 

It was an odd feeling, to say the least. Superficially, she'd expected being possessed by the spirit of Fear to feel like the exact opposite of possession by Curiosity. But it was actually strikingly similar. The same feeling, just moving in the other direction.

Well, more like RUNNING in the other direction now.

The breeze swirled in powerful gusts from every direction, pushing, resisting, and sometimes even propelling her forward as she picked up the pace. She didn't have time for any tug-of-war games today. The slant of the hill ahead was sure to be muddy and inconvenient, especially in this wind, but even caution was a luxury now. And just like Curiosity before it, Fear was what carried her legs forward, without any input from her brain, without any reservations, without...well, without fear.

Why am I the only one who always has to deal with Nash? she asked the universe sourly. Why couldn't you have given me an EASY task, like helping stupid Uncle Joe put up the storm windows or something? Why did you let HIM send ME out to reel in his STUPID-ASS SON? I've got more important things to think about right now!

Maeva turned her feet sideways to help keep balance as she hustled down the hill, trying to recite the new message she'd read just a few minutes ago to take her mind off her frustrations. Alba Bowman, the widow she'd seen holding the Cat in an old photo, had actually sent her a reply. She seemed both shocked and slightly embarrassed at the notion of a "nineteen-year-old" messaging her on a dating website, but she'd made herself sound articulate and composed nonetheless.

"Hello, Maeva! I must admit, I was pretty astonished that someone so young would message me on this old website (haven't used it in years, L.O.L.!). I think I'm a bit out of your league though, to be honest. I may have been "curious" back in my younger years, if you know what I mean, but I doubt either of us would feel comfortable dating with nearly two generations of culture shock between us. Anyway, it sounds like that wasn't your primary concern in the first place, so let me get down to business."

Maeva felt a brief flicker of imagination pass by as Curiosity shoved a mental image back in the closet for later. She shook her head and continued her slippery descent.

"So you're living at the same house I did now, eh? That's neat. Cameron and I rented that place for years. Absolutely gorgeous in summer and autumn. Is the fishing boat rental guy still there? We used to go to his barbecues every year. Blah blah, memory lane, nostalgic baloney, etc, etc…"

A particularly strong gust punched her in the face, knocking her flat on her butt against the hillside as the next part of the message flashed again in her mind.

"...please tell me you're joking about the Cat."

Even though text cannot acutely convey emotion as well as speech, something about the placement and phrasing of that sentence stood out ominously. The words felt separated from the rest of the message, perforated by line breaks above and below, giving it a detached, grim feeling in stark contrast to the cheerful greeting above.

Maeva picked herself up and pressed forward again.

"I don't know where it came from. I think it was just a stray or maybe a feral who'd just been roaming around that neighborhood for a long time. We assumed it just lived nearby and visited all the people in the area, but none of our neighbors had ever gotten a visit. They said he was like a curse...a wandering spirit haunting the house or something. A cat that just...showed up and then it wouldn't leave."

A shuddering thought made her stop for a moment. This story sounded suspiciously similar to the one Nash had been filling her ear with earlier...but that line about the "curse" made her snort it off dismissively.

"Now I know you wouldn't think that's so bad, having a wild cat that hangs around your house, catching mice and sitting pretty on the side of the road as you pull up...but it didn't stop there. The cat was always trying to get into the house, always invading our privacy, yowling outside in the middle of the night, and honestly, it just started to creep us out. It would always just stare at us, like it was going to...do something. You know that feeling? Maybe you do. I think it started to drive my husband crazy. We tried catching it in a trap and giving it to a rescue shelter, but they were already full and it escaped later that night anyway. I tried planting onions and garlic around the place, hoping the stink would drive it away. Nope. My husband even tried taking a shot at it with a hunting rifle. Nothing. That cat just kept coming back...Every. Single. Day."

What, did Nash just completely plagiarize this poor woman's entire story, then write her out of it so he could focus on the guns and the hillbilly lifestyle? What an asshole...

"Well, one day my husband had to go out on some business trip with his company on the VIA train (you know, the one that goes from Vancouver to Toronto), and I came up with the BRILLIANT (SARCASM!!!) idea for him to take the Cat with him. I told him he could just drop it off somewhere in Toronto, where we'd never have to worry about it again. Easiest way to get rid of your problems is to just ship them off to Toronto, right?"

She'd forget about it later, but at that moment she told herself to remember that quote and get it done in needlepoint, so that she could hang it on her wall.

"And well, as you know, what happened next was...the accident. My husband was killed instantly. I didn't even get the call about it until the day after...you know, it's funny. You'd think after almost two decades I'd be over it, but...that sort of thing really haunts you. You never know when it's gonna show up again. Sometimes you dream about it at night. Sometimes you see a clothing pattern or you hear a song that reminds you of the whole thing. Sometimes people send you messages on a dating website that ask you to recount it in great detail. Little everyday things in life just pop up and...suddenly it all comes rushing back in an instant, and your brain just sort of fogs up and it gets hard to breathe for a minute...sorry, I guess you didn't need to know all that. It just felt good to write it all out."

Maeva paused, feeling a stab in her chest. The wind flung her hair across her face as she imagined the traumas and emotional scars she must have unearthed for this poor old lady. Memories she'd probably repressed for longer than Maeva had been alive, called back into service after that old enemy had finally resurfaced once again…

...b-but it's not like I did it on purpose, she rationalized, pushing on against the brutal gusts of wind. And it's not like I'm making this lady's life miserable for no reason, either. I didn't choose these circumstances. I didn't calculate how to deal the most emotional damage possible to her. This isn't a game, this is just how the stage of life was set when I walked in. It's not my fault it had to get worse before it can get better...

"...but it gets worse. The very next day - not even a single day after I'd gotten the most horrible news I've ever received in my entire 69-year-old life...I woke up in the morning, got dressed to go meet with the mortician, opened the front door…"

"...and there he was. Staring right at me. Staring right THROUGH me. Licking his paw like the filthy monster he was."

That part wasn't hard to picture...

"I knew it was his fault. Somehow, some way, he had been the reason the train derailed. He had to be. The neighbors were right, he must have been a curse of some kind. A vengeful spirit haunting that house. And I was looking right into its guilty, murderous eyes."

Those same eyes flashed in her memory. Fear drove her to move faster.

"I didn't know what else to do. The cat wouldn't leave me alone. There was no way to get rid of it, I already told you how hard I'd tried. And now we were paying for it in blood. This wasn't something I could just ignore anymore, I had to do something. Anything! I just wanted to get it out of my life. I wanted to make sure I would never see that cat again. I guess you could say I got a little crazy in the head…".

Her foot slipped, and the wind pitched her forward from behind.

"Looking back, this may have been the absolute dumbest, most absurd idea I've ever had in my life. But you've got to understand, I was at my wit's end here. I seriously did not know what else to do. And this seemed like the only logical option at the time...I sold the house and bought a hot air balloon."

SCHMUCK.

"Don't give me that look. I KNOW you're giving the computer screen a funny look right now! DON'T!!!! People get weird when they're desperate! They'll do anything to achieve their aims, and for me, that just happened to be the solution I came up with!"

For a moment, Maeva remained motionless, face-down in the mud. She still wasn't sure she believed the old lady...the story fit together too perfectly, like someone had been spying on her for the past few days and reverse-engineered the perfect setup for the universe to dump all over her like this.

Then again, what other explanation did she have?

And more importantly, what was she going to do about it now that the whole mess was HER problem?

If Fear had any say in the matter, she was going to pick herself up, wipe the mud out of her eyes, and haul her ass down to the lake before something horrible happened...

"Anyway. Take a wild guess what I did with that balloon. If you guessed 'tying up the cat in the gondola, turning on the heat and walking away', then you guessed correctly! Gold star for you! I suckered one of the neighbor boys to catch the cat for me, told him I was taking it up with me in the balloon, then tied the sucker up and left him for dead. Then, just for good measure, I packed up all my things into a moving van and skipped town the next morning. Pretty smart move, eh?"

Smart like a silver fox, she thought, rolling her eyes.

"So, that's my story. And well, if what you say about seeing a wild cat around those parts is true...then...I guess...all I can say is...I'm glad I got the hell out of there when I did! Not a doubt in my mind that it's the exact same goddamn cat. Looks like the neighbors were right, that house is mega haunted. Sucks to be you, kid."

"Anyway, good luck with your ancient Indian curse problem. And stay off of dating websites like this one, unless you like having men send you inappropriate pictures of themselves every two hours."

"Much love, Alba."

Normally this would have been the part where she made snide remarks about the woman's dismissive attitude, but it was Fear who was in control right now, not Sarcasm. And Fear was trying to prevent a murder.

"Nash!" she shouted into the storm, fruitlessly. "Your dad said your ass is grass if you don't get back in the house in five minutes!"

Predictably, the only reply was a gust of wind that threw her hair backward behind her. She squinted out into the sunset darkness ahead, out toward the island. An unexpected blend of deep orange and purple greeted her back, despite the huge gray storm clouds that had blotted out most of the horizon.

Weird...there shouldn't have been any room left for sunset colors on the horizon...and it was already well past twilight anyway, so...what then…?

...oh god, NO.

"NASH!!!"

Still no answer...no time, anyway.

Maeva whipped her head over toward the dock. Confirmed, the old rotten boat was still floating right in the place she'd left it, pulled up just far enough onto the bank that it wouldn't slip back into the lake. She shot forward and stumbled into it, forcing it into the water.

She could smell it now, and it made her cough. The sunset colors, the thick air, the odor of smoke. Nash had done it. Of course he had. Of course he would think setting fire to Mister Bellingham's lodge in the middle of a storm to shoot a cat full of nails from a shotgun was a good idea. OF COURSE HE WOULD.

"Nash, you'd better get your ass in this boat right now before I shove that shotgun right up it!!" was what she wanted to shout at him. But not only was it impossible to shout over the roar of the wind and the fire, she wasn't sure she could convincingly add enough weight to her voice to intimidate him into listening. Some people just couldn't be out-threatened...especially not people with brains the size of shotgun shells.

She almost couldn't see him at all, looking for his silhouette against the fire of the night. But as she rowed closer, the outline of the shotgun's barrel became more and more prominent, giving away his position. He was perched atop the big rock he'd sat on earlier, gun pointed squarely at the blazing pile of mud and sticks.

"Nash!"

"Shut the hell up and get the hell out!" he screamed back at her, not taking his eyes off the growing conflagration. "You oughtta know better'n to yell at a man with a loaded gun in his hands!"

Somewhere in her brain Maeva doubted he would ever do it, but with Fear in charge, her imagination was free to run wild. And now her mind was already visualizing the nails firing at 400 km/h right through her skin in glorious, horrible slow motion. Fear rudely stored the image in permanent memory to show her again later at some inopportune time.

"...Nash, you gotta come back with me!" she managed to spit out as she hit the bank, bumping against the "good" boat. "The storm…! It's...it's already here! You gotta come back before something happens!"

"Oh somethin's gonna happen alright…" he growled back. "I told you, I ain't comin' back 'til that filthy animal's DEAD."

"Don't be stupid, there's no more time!" she insisted, making a move to stand up and grab his arm, then hesitating as the wind threaten to blow her over.

"Final warnin', pussy willow!" he shouted, not taking his eyes off the fire. "You do NOT want to dick with me right now!"

"Nash…!"

She stopped. Her heart stopped. The whole world stopped.

A lanky shadow had emerged from the lodge, trotting quickly and low to the ground.

"NO!"

Too late.

The explosion was deafening, and seemed to bounce off the trees in every direction. Crackling fire and gusting winds replaced the silence that should have followed it. Maeva picked herself back up after Fear had thrown her into the boat to put some distance - ANY distance - between her and the gun.

Nash's eyes glinted in the darkness as they swept back and forth, side to side, looking for mutilated animal remains. He slowly dipped one hand back into his pocket to pull out the other shot shell.

The smoke was starting to sting Maeva's eyes. She squinted and waved her hand to clear it away, desperate to see if he'd hit or not. Between the stinging and the bright glow of the flames, she couldn't make out a thing.

"...where'd that sumbitch get to?" Nash muttered to himself, shell loaded and gun cocked.

The fire only popped louder and grew higher in response, fueled by the storm winds. The Cat was nowhere to be seen…

...until it appeared right in front of his face, screaming its unearthly scream.

Maeva stared in paralyzed horror as Nash's silhouette danced and staggered about, rocking forward and back, twisting and convulsing to free himself from tooth and nail. She felt her fingers bore into the sides of the boat as she failed to react, but also failed to look away.

And even above the wind and the fire and the mixed screams of cat and man, she could HEAR the flesh being ripped apart.

And then came an even louder sound. The explosion of gunfire.

Despite being too late anyway, she instinctively ducked and held her hands over her head, releasing a scream of her own. The infamous Off Switch had been pressed; she was no longer in control of her body. But, instead of her body being compelled to help by the possession of Curiosity, she was only compelled to shrink into a tiny ball by Fear.

And before long, the echo of the explosion had faded away. The wind howled. The fire crunched and crackled. But the screaming had stopped.

No no no NO NO NO…

Save for the flicker of firelight and the waving of grass and branches in the wind, nothing was moving. She didn't feel an open wound anywhere. She couldn't see a slinking cat. Everything alive seemed to have paused.

"...N-Nash?"

No answer. Maybe because she'd barely choked out the word from beneath the blankets of fear.

"NASH."

Silence. Er...well, you know.

Oh god...don't tell me I'm gonna have to get up and look for myself…

Fear kept her on her back a minute longer, knuckles still white from gripping the sides of the boat, but she could at last feel Curiosity slowly clawing its way back into command. Or maybe it was still Fear after all, telling her she couldn't stay on the island much longer with that fire still growing.

Whichever it was, they finally managed to push her body forward again, and she leaned over one side of the boat to get a glimpse of the damages. The intense firelight had given the scene a weird contrast, making it hard to identify what exactly she was looking at, but it looked like…

...it looked like she shouldn't have looked.

Maeva coughed and pitched forward, hacking the smoke out of her lungs and almost hacking the contents out of her stomach as well. Her eyes glazed over as she felt the sting of the smoke and the burn of the indelible image she'd just seen. She swallowed back the urge to vomit, arms shaking as she tried to once again pull herself back up.

You can't be afraid, Maeva, she told herself. You don't have time to be paralyzed. You have to be brave. You have to pick him up and do what you have to. Come on. Get it together! MOVE. YOUR. LIMBS.

You're afraid, aren't you? Fear asked her. It's okay to be afraid, isn't it? Fear is just a natural response.

She felt something else against her skin as the wind brushed past. Something that felt like tiny spikes...rain?

I don't want to be afraid anymore, she resisted, fighting for control of her racing heartbeat. I want to fight back!

Then USE your fear to your advantage, Fear said back. What are you MORE afraid of? The sight of blood? Or being burned alive in the fires of hell on earth?

...of course.

With another snapping sound, everything lined up. Maeva understood, coughed out the smoke, and found control of her arms again.

We have to go, she repeated, trying hard not to look at the bloody mess that had once comprised Nash's face as she reached over and put her arms around his body. I have to get him into the boat, and we have to get off the island before it burns. Now! We have to go, NOW!

Her vision blurred. Good, it would only distract her anyway. She heaved, throwing herself backward into the "good" boat, with Nash's deadweight body lying across her legs. She pulled an oar from the seat and thrust it out against the bank, shoving off hard as the four elements waged war against each other over the rest of the island. She hoped the incoming rain would quench the fire before it spread any further.

Fear drove her forward now as she rowed back to the safety of the mainland, same as Curiosity might have done in its place. She had everything to fear in that moment: fire, death, disease, darkness...but, now that she understood how her Fear worked, and to use it to her survival, maybe she really had nothing to fear after all.

Unfortunately, her body had not gotten the memo, and in the confusion, had gotten so scared that it went ahead and peed her pants for her. Thanks, body.


	12. Chapter 12: House of The Shadows of Dread

Okay, this has GOT to be your dumbest idea yet, Maeva.

Outside, the wind howled in agreement.

This is the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel worst plan you've hatched since this whole debacle started, she chided herself. You're an idiot if you think this is really going to work. This isn't a fairy tale. This isn't a cheerfully optimistic animated movie. There is a deadly-serious homicidal Cat out there who just viciously ripped your cousin into LITERAL PIECES, and the best you can come up with is this bullshit?

She hesitated to reconsider, then shook her head and swallowed back the lump of cynicism in her throat, resuming her rummage through the spice rack. Negativity had never been her strong suit, after all.

Still, this WAS a pretty dumb idea. Even dumber than the time she'd thought the expression "smoke some herbs" meant you could literally light any variety of vegetation on fire and still get the desired psychoactive effect, safely and legally. That idea went over about as well as making toast in a bathroom.

It did make her wonder, though, if maybe catnip was a smokeable herb? Did smoked catnip give a Cat the same high as smoked marijuana gave humans? Maybe offering the Cat a joint full of nepeta cataria could be used as some kind of ceremonial non-aggression pact that would--

Oh for god's sake, you're losing your marbles, Maeva. Get a grip. You let Fear get a hold of you for barely an hour or two, get splattered by a little real-life carnage, then suddenly your brain turns to oatmeal and you're as useless as a one-legged duck in the water. You're gonna end up in therapy by the end of the week at this rate.

And besides, Mom doesn't keep catnip on the spice rack anyway.

She frowned and continued sifting through the various bottles and cans and baggies of crushed herbs that been collected over the years. C'mon, there had to be SOMETHING useful in here. Some kind of stand-in for catnip. Like a vegan substitute or something. She held a bag up to her nose for a fragrance check. Hmm...valerian seemed like a promising option...

You're such an idiot, she continued. This is the kind of idea idiots cook up when they're desperate. This is as stupid as that Alba lady trussing the Cat up in a hot air balloon. Don't be an Alba!

Another gust plowed hard against the walls. This time she swore she could FEEL the house inching itself off the ground beneath her feet. Standing next to a spice rack full of glass bottles suddenly felt a lot less safe than it had a few minutes ago. She pocketed the valerian and stepped away briskly.

"Hey," the voice of Mom called to her as she entered the living room. "So Joe just left for the hospital with Nash. I told him going out there is suicide right now, but I guess what else is he supposed to do, right?"

Maeva swallowed a mouthful of nerve and guilt, looking down at the floor. "...is Nash...gonna be okay?"

Mom pursed her lips and broke eye contact as well. "...I don't wanna get hopeful. He got torn up pretty bad."

She shuddered as the mental images resurfaced. The after-smell of valerian on her hands seemed to comfort her, but not much. Her breath thickened. It shouldn't have felt like her fault. She knew if anyone ever deserved a thrashing like that, it definitely should have been Nash, but...well, rhetorical karma is easier to swallow than watching karma happen right in front of you.

"Hey, c'mon," Mom brightened up, giving her a fist tap on the shoulder. "Let's think positive. He'll probably pull through. It's not like he's being taken to some back-alley doctor or anything, I'm sure he's in good, modern hands. If his skin's anywhere near as thick as his skull, they'll probably have him stitched up good as new overnight."

It was a stupid thing to say, but at least it got a chuckle out of her. Meager consolation, but at least it broke the crust that had petrified her face. Score one for humor...

"Well, anyway..." Mom continued, heading for the door. "Now that Joe's out of our hair, let's shut that generator off, eh? Save us some backup power for after the storm, so we can adjust properly."

At first Maeva wanted to protest, since plunging the house into darkness in the middle of a storm would only make the demons of the night grow stronger. But then she asked herself why on earth Maeva Giroux, purveyor of the weird and macabre, and now master of using Fear to overcome other Fears, should be afraid of the demons of the night.

...maybe 'cause I've seen them up close and personal, and I don't ever want to see them again any time soon.

"Don't go tellin' me you're afraid of the dark again," Mom added, lacing up her boots. "What are you, four?"

"I'm fourTEEN," came the reply, surrounded by a heavy sigh. "I'm not afraid…".

That was...well, it wasn't the truth, but it wasn't quite a lie either. She wasn't JUST afraid. Fear remained front and center, but it had mingled with a few other feelings now as well...Doubt? Hopelessness? It was a constrained kind of Fear, a desire to run and hide, but with the looming knowledge that the only place to do so was in the shadow of Dread, where monsters could still find you and crunch your skull between their teeth.

She shivered.

"Well, what better way to chase away the shadows of dread than by lighting some candles?" Mom prompted, the eerie flash of maternal telepathy gleaming in her eyes. She passed Maeva a flip lighter and gestured with her head to a box full of them sitting on the coffee table.

Maeva sighed, then pulled herself together and nodded decisively. If her fate was already consigned to death by dread shadow, then she may as well go out in true Giroux fashion...whatever that meant. She'd never really taken the time to imagine what her final blaze of glory would look like. It was probably at least moderately cool, though.

"Alright, now wait until I get back in the house before you light 'em," Mom instructed, one hand on the doorknob. "Don't want the wind to fan up any more flames tonight, if ya know what I mean."

"Yeah yeah," Maeva brushed her off, images of fire-lighted silhouettes still fresh in her mind. "Lightning doesn't strike twice, ya know."

"That's a lie but I'll trust you to get it right anyway," Mom replied, finger pointed back at her - no, not THAT finger. "Prepare the offering, child of fire!"

She snorted, but grabbed a small stump candle from the box anyway and took position, then turned and gave Mom a ready nod.

Mom braced herself for impact, then sharply threw open the door, a gust of wind and rain billowing past her and scattering a stack of clipped coupons across the floor before she got it closed again. The storm was finally about to kick into high gear. It would have been hilariously apt to suggest that it was raining Cats and dogs (hold the dogs), but, given her circumstances, Maeva scolded her brain for even thinking it.

Aaaand CLICK. The room plunged into a thick darkness, leaving only the surround-sound muffled roar of the storm for company. With no light bulbs, no moon, and no stars, the world had never felt more pitch black. It didn't matter whether she shut her eyes or kept them open, the same darkness was there. The darkness and the wind and the remnant terror still lurking in her brainspace.

Seconds ticked by. She could already feel Fear moving around inside her again, crawling its way back up her throat like a devil made of heartburn. Her breathing grew heavier.

But then, just as abruptly as before, the door flung open again, heralding another blast of storm filling the room, followed by the appearance of a dripping, sopping Mom. At the sound of the lock clicking closed again, the designated Child of Fire fulfilled her sworn destiny, bringing forth a tiny, flickering light from the center of the room. She passed it to Mom, then spawned another light. And another. And a dozen more after that.

Slowly, vaguely, the room took its normal form again as one timid light after another slowly illuminated and dispelled the shadows of dread. Despite the wind's every howl, despite the ever-present beast of Fear, a room full of frail candles prevailed. All these tiny dancing lights, scattered across the furniture, each its own beacon of hope and fire hazard.

And now in the center of them all stood Mom, ever calm, ever collected. She nodded approvingly at all the firelight and, after callously casting her drenched jacket into the corner, took a casual seat on the futon, putting her feet up on the coffee table and sighing with relief. She turned to Maeva and patted the seat invitingly.

And what else could Maeva do but shrug and take her spot?

For the first minute or so, neither of them said anything, and only the continued drone of the wind filled the silence. Maeva found herself bracing for an inevitable stupid joke or an inappropriately-timed fart to break the awkward ice, but such gas never passed. Instead, Mom seemed to put on a more serious, maternal demeanor.

"...it's okay to be scared, you know," she finally said, looking over at her daughter. "I might tease ya a lot, because I'm your mom and I'm kind of an ass sometimes, but don't be afraid to be...well, afraid."

Maeva chuckled softly, then sighed. "Yeah...well. You know how it is."

"I don't, really," Mom replied, reclining even further. "Why don't you tell me how it is?"

Turning to face her, Maeva felt the words travel from her brain to her mouth, but then stop short. Something was blocking them. She sighed and folded her hands, looking down at the floor instead.

"Hey." She felt a tap on her shoulder. "Speak your mind. I'll do my best not to laugh at you."

You WOULDN'T be laughing if you'd seen what I've seen, Maeva replied bitterly, still unsure how to reactivate her speech systems. And how do you expect me to just straight-up talk about it? Even when I say it to myself I sound like a certified nutcase…

"Maeva." She felt a kick against her ankle. "Answer me. I already told you, it's okay to say you're scared."

No shit, Sherlock, she snapped. Of course I'm scared. Isn't that obvious? Just shut up for a minute while I think of a way to say this that doesn't sound absolutely insane…

"What's the matter, Cat got your tongue?"

"STOP MAKING THIS HARD FOR ME!" she shouted, head turning so fast it made an audible popping noise. Every muscle in her face became tense as she realized she actually HAD shouted it this time. Her cheeks reddened.

Mom blinked a few times, then eased back into a half-smile. "...okay, that's a bit more like the Maeva I know and love. So, now that you've gone and shattered the awkwardness barrier, let's talk like normal people."

"I was...shouting...over the noise of the storm..." she tried to explain nonchalantly, despite an oncoming rush of very chalant feelings.

"Sure."

"'Cause I was trying to be louder than it is..." she continued, almost able to say what she wanted to.

"Mhmm."

And finally, she was able to choke out in a whisper, "...because I'm scared."

On cue, the wind beat against the wall behind them.

"...and there you have it," Mom simply nodded and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I told you already, it's okay to be scared."

"Yeah...I guess."

"You guess?"

"I just...it feels like I've been through so much in the past two days alone," Maeva continued, sinking further forward. "All these horrible new things keep happening, one after the other...and I keep thinking one day I'm gonna find the answer and everything's gonna suddenly make sense. But it just never comes. All I end up with is more questions."

Mom's arm snaked its way around her shoulder. "Yeah, well...sometimes life's just a bitch like that."

"...is this what it's like for you all the time?" Maeva asked, leaning back into her embrace as another gust picked up. "Like, as an adult? Every time a new problem pops up, you feel like you're supposed to know how to handle it, even though nobody asked you to in the first place?"

"...what the hell Maeva, when did you get so philosophical?" Mom asked back, running her fingers through Maeva's hair. "You just told me you were fourteen. You're supposed to be thinking about cartoons and angsty music and jokes about body parts, not adult responsibilities!"

She received a flustered sigh in response. But Maeva made no effort to get up either.

"What I'm saying is…you don't have to act like you're older than you are." She continued stroking Maeva's hair gently. "You don't have to grow up overnight just because some really scary shit happened to you, y'know? You just have to act like you're Maeva Giroux."

"...so what does Maeva Giroux act like?"

Mom raised an eyebrow and thumped her on the arm. "What do you think, dummy? She acts like you did before any of this crazy started going down."

"Tell me."

She felt Maeva relax even further, nestling her head in the crook beneath her shoulder. "Well, let's see...she's...observant, and creative...she sees the world from two different eyes. She's a sensible, modern person like her dad, but a fierce, dedicated native like her mom. Half a warrior, half an artist, all her own self. Nobody in the known universe is exactly like Maeva Giroux is. That's why I think there's no better person for you to aspire to be. Ya got that, kid?"

The wind and rain continued assaulting the windows from the outside as Maeva let the words settle on her skin, osmosing them in for closer inspection. At face value, they were the same words she'd heard repeated in every G-rated tv show and movie she'd ever watched. Of course you were supposed to be yourself. Of course you were special. These were words that should have been empty, regurgitated life lessons that kindergarten teachers hand out to their class on the first day of the new school year.

...but somehow, when Mom spoke them, the words became something more. They became REAL. Solid. They held that certain kind of meaning that you could really grab on to, pull yourself up a cliff with, or drink for sustenance in the desert. Maybe there really wasn't anything to be scared of after all...

...no, that's not right, she told herself. It's OKAY to be scared. It's OKAY not knowing how to handle every situation. I may be fourteen, but I'm also ONLY fourteen. And I can't be expected to be anything more than who or what I already am. I can't be more than Maeva Giroux, the intrepid fourteen-year-old wannabe-artist with a penchant for finding trouble, then shaking its hand, inviting it for tea, and maybe dating its daughter.

And, when she put it that way, those so-called "empty" words suddenly felt like words of power after all.

"Hey, you listening?" Mom nudged her out of the dreamzone, back into the world of darkness and wind and creaking wood. "I asked you if my super excellent advice did any good for ya."

Maeva finally pulled herself up from the comforting pillow of Mom's boob, preparing to deliver a sassy retort, when she noticed a very small something flicker in the corner of her eye. And it wasn't firelight, either…

Her head snapped to the side, eyes darting left and right. Where? On the floor?

"...what, was it something I said?" Mom asked to upheld the finger she got in response - no, still not THAT finger.

Could have sworn…

"...was it something I DIDN'T say?"

Maeva bit her lip, eyes still flicking back and forth. Nothing...god, am I just jumping at shadows now?

No, wait! There!

Amid the wavering orbs of candlelight, down on the floor between the legs of a small side table were two smaller orbs of light. They seemed to be catching the glow of the fires as they turned, and the small flash of color had been what caught Maeva's attention.

The orbs had a distinct green tinge around the edges.

"Oh, shit."

"...what is it?" Mom demanded, slightly annoyed by now at the lack of response.

"Cat."

"...oh shit, for real?"

Maeva pointed at the green orbs on the floor. They too were darting around, somewhat frantically. They pointed upward as another massive gust of wind shoved against the old walls of the house.

...was the Cat...scared? Of the storm?

It wasn't until she found her fingers gripped tightly around the edge of the coffee table that she realized she'd been inching her way closer and closer toward it. She froze, or at least she thought she'd told her body to. Her limbs weren't responding, which could only mean...but wait...why wasn't she afraid all of a sudden?

No, she was definitely afraid...but Fear was still sitting down in the pit of her belly. Up in her head, controlling her arms and legs, dictating her every move without prior authorization, was her old pal Curiosity, either back from the dead or finally made stronger than Fear by the pep talk she'd just had with Mom.

Well, Maeva surmised, in that case, let's see if Curiosity does to humans what it supposedly does to cats...

As she crept closer, wondering again how the intruder could have even gotten inside with all the doors and windows shut tight, the vague candlelight began to etch out the contours of the Cat's body. Something looked different, though. It looked...smaller.

"...Cat?" she said, accidentally out loud. "...what are you doing here?"

The eyes swiveled and pointed directly at hers. She saw its body crouch low to the ground, and felt a twist in her stomach. It looked ready to pounce. Her arms finally locked up again. She swallowed.

...but it did not attack.

Instead, it gave a frail, pathetic mew.

Maeva blinked. "...come again?"

Another mew, tiny and fragile.

Behind her, Mom rose from her post at the futon, stirred to action by the creak of buffeted windows and a fierce pressure building against the walls. Something rattled loudly in the bathroom.

"Shit, this part might get bad," she said, prodding Maeva's behind with her foot. "C'mon, let's get away from these windows."

"Not yet," Maeva waved her off, focusing on the Cat. No, this wasn't the Cat. It couldn't be. It didn't sound like the Cat, nor look like him, nor act like him.

It looked like a Kitten.

Another wailing gust of wind blasted the side of the house. "Maeva, I'm not kidding. Get UP!"

"Just give me a minute!" she shouted back. She stretched a hand out toward the scaredy cat. If it really was a kitten, then whose kitten was it? Did it belong to the Cat? Would that make the Cat actually a daddy Cat? Er, mommy, maybe? And how the HELL did this Kitten get in the house??

The howl of the wind rose even louder until it became a sustained whine, all but rocking the house on its foundation now. Whatever was rattling in the bathroom had fallen onto the floor with a loud THUNK.

And still the Kitten remained harmless, glancing in terror all around it. Whether kindred of the demon Cat or not, it clearly wasn't going to attack her. Or at least, that's what Curiosity said over the protesting voice of Fear.

"It's gonna be okay," she said, just loud enough for her voice to carry over the maelstrom outside.

The Kitten stared up at her and again mewed loudly, taking a step closer. The sound seemed to hang in the air, like a constant ringing in her ear.

She stretched her hand out a little farther.

The ringing got a little louder. Even when she cocked her head to one side, the volume kept increasing. The mewing sound soon harmonized with the howl of the wind, forming a duet of wailing horror.

No...there was more to it than that. Not just one mewing sound at one constant pitch. It was its own harmony. There were more loud mewing sounds. A symphony of shrill kitten noises.

But only one Kitten...?

She snapped her attention toward the shuddering groan of a window at its limit behind her. Out in the darkness of the night sky, catching the glint of the firelight from inside, she could see tiny flashes and sparkles of green flying past.

Tiny green eyes. She was sure of it. They whipped past in the screaming wind, but she was positive they were the same as the eyes of the Kitten in front of her. All of them meowing at once. A horrible chorus of yowling cats and howling storm, getting louder, and louder.

Her eardrums were about to explode. The Kitten reached out a paw and mewed desperately. She quickly scooped him up and pressed him tight against her chest.

And then the window shattered.

And then Mom dove on top of her.

And then there was a loud smack.

And everything went completely dark again.


	13. Chapter 13: This Is My Home Now, I Live Here

...good god, that hurt.

Despite her every hardship, despite every uninvited trauma, despite EVERYTHING that life had thrown at her in just these past few days...none of it seemed to hurt worse than the pounding headache that finally woke Maeva up from the dead.

The pain flashed through several sequential colors in every part of her brain as thought processes slowly came back up, one by one. She immediately became aware of five specific things, and decided to analyze each one in turn to take her attention off the mental fist beating against the inside of her skull.

Okay Maeva, she told herself, neural motors revving up. Let's do a systems diagnostic.

My eyes don't want to open. Fine with me, I'd rather not be awake right now anyway. The tip of my nose is cold, and the air it's breathing is cold as well. Did I leave the refrigerator open? Smack, smack...the inside of my mouth tastes like death. Think I need to brush my teeth...which probably means I've been out for hours. I can hear a faint rustling noise, and an occasional tinkling sound, but not much else. The whole world sounds silent and cold, like a survived apocalypse...

And then she used her fingers. There was something small and warm in her hands. Something fuzzy...no, hairy. A stuffed animal, maybe? Or...WAIT--

Her eyes snapped open, letting in more light than they were ready to handle. She had to immediately squint them closed again, and groaned in pain. Dammit, who left the curtains open overnight?

Again, WAIT--

Overnight? Animal? Headache?

Realization flowed back into her mind as she let her eyes gradually open again, pushing herself up with one hand. It took some effort, but once she hit a sitting position again, she took a moment to resurvey the scene, this time using her most primary sense organs for maximum data collection: her eyes.

In every direction, the house had been absolutely thrashed. The ground was covered in shattered glass, fallen shelves, and assorted magazines and papers that had blown about from end to end. A faint breeze was pouring in from the broken window behind her. The back of her hoodie felt wet and stiff with cold.

But, most importantly of all, there was indeed a small, warm, hairy thing in her hands. And indeed it was the Kitten she groggily remembered seeing last night. And indeed it was still alive. Being picked up had awoken it from slumber, and now it seemed every bit as confused as she was.

She held out the Kitten at arm's length to get a good look at it. Unsurprisingly, it was a bite-sized replica of its parent, from the toasted marshmallow tinge to the smoky green eyes, small enough to carry in one arm.

"...you okay, little guy?" she asked.

Whoa, she thought, putting her free hand to her throat. Maybe I should be asking MYSELF that first...I sound like I just swallowed a whole frog.

The Kitten merely stared back at her, tilted its head, then resumed looking around absent-mindedly. Not a satisfactory answer to her question, but at least this sort of attitude was cute, and highly preferable over mysterious threats of violence. A fair trade, all things considered.

Moving on, the next thing Maeva noticed was Mom, lying curled up on the floor beside her, snoring lightly. Her clothes and hair were disheveled, but she seemed more or less unharmed. As if a little storm could do her any damage, anyway.

She also noticed the phone in Mom's bandaged hand. She might have been waiting for a chance to check in with Dad or Uncle Joe…

...who knows how long it's been since she checked though? Maybe I'll just take a peek myself...

She stroked the Kitten softly with one hand, the other taking the phone from Mom's unresisting grasp and powering it up. In her mind, she wanted to recount and analyze the situation while she waited, but every time a thought moved from one brain cell to another, she felt a throb of pain across her entire dome. There was no seat at the table for logic or critical thinking. Not even Fear or Curiosity. Really, she just wanted to sleep.

...but not before she got at least one answer.

The phone blinked to life, greeting her with a beep-beep warning about low battery power. She brushed away the notifications and went straight for the voicemail box, listening with bated breath as the call connected. Three people had been plucked right out of her daily life, and sleep would never come until she could confirm that at least ONE of them was safe and in capable hands.

...and hopefully that one in question wasn't just Uncle Joe.

Click. "You have...one new message."

Beep.

"Hey girls, it's Dad."

A sigh of relief escaped her lips.

"Just calling to tell you I'm going to be fine, the doctors were able to clean up my face and there's no infections or anything like that. But I am also told there are trees and power lines down all over the place? So I won't be able to come home until the road crews are able to clear them. And, uh, I guess somehow Joe and Nash ended up here too? I don't know what happened with him, but I bet you already do, so...uhm, I'll call again when I know more. Love you both. Bye."

Boop. No more messages.

WIth that, Maeva exhaled fully and let herself slump forward, bathing in the silence of relief. She felt as if she hadn't had a moment to rest in weeks, even though it'd barely been a single day. But semantics were semantics. The storm had finally passed on, Dad was delayed but at least alive and well, Mom was asleep but also alive and well, and now she seemed to have acquired a brand new pet kitten who was curled up on her--wait, nope. Guess not.

The Kitten started squirming in her hands, as if trying to get away. It seemed to be looking or listening for something coming from...outside, maybe?

Better play along for now, she told herself, fighting back the drum still pounding in her forehead. If this little bundle of joy really does belong to the Cat, then who KNOWS what it might be capable of if I accidentally piss it off…

With some effort, and a small amount of tormented inner cursing, she managed to bring herself up to her feet and staggered over toward the front door. There was a burning feeling every time her eyes closed, and a stinging feeling when she left them open for too long. This had better be over quick...

Tenderly, timidly, Maeva opened the door, taking in a first glimpse of the damages left behind by the storm. And what she saw immediately brought up the burning acid she'd been trying so hard to swallow back.

Kittens…

Just like the sparrows that had littered the ground only a day ago, the driveway was strewn now with a dozen fallen kittens not much different from the one in her own hands. Maeva pitched forward against the railing on the porch, convulsing as she spit out whatever it was her stomach wouldn't allow her to keep.

Memories began to resurface...the howling of the wind. The flashing eyes in the darkness. Every horrible noise she'd heard last night echoed inside the canals of her ears. The air had been full of kittens last night...

...but there wasn't even any time to be sick about it. Out of the corner of her eye, she detected movement. Something else was approaching.

Something familiar.

"Release my child," a voice she knew hissed sharply. "NOW!"

There was no room for hesitation. Maeva didn't even bother confirming the identity of the voice, much less question its command. She obediently placed the Kitten gently on the ground, watching it trot over with its tail pleasantly raised toward the voice's owner, the Cat himself.

...er...HERself, maybe?

The Cat stepped forward to rub noses with the mini-Cat, as if exchanging mutual affirmations of "are you alright" and "yes mom I'm fine". The Kitten took its place beside its apparent parent and gave an adorable, tiny mew back up toward Maeva.

Her only response was to blink, and nod vaguely. The world was still spinning, the sights and smells of death rolling across the yard in great billows as the breeze meandered around them. Her stomach still protested. A strange pressure seemed to emanate from her every muscle. The whole world seemed unreal and off balance. This might all be just a dream…

"My child says you saved them," the Cat said, ignoring Maeva's nauseous complexion entirely. "I'm pleased enough with this information to...CONSIDER not killing you now."

The words almost flew right past her, but Maeva found just enough strength to root her mind in place and let thought flow correctly. "...uhm...good, thank you."

The Cat regarded her with a narrowing of its eyes, like an incomplete blink. "This is the first time I've ever seen a Human save us from a storm."

She glanced around at the potential graveyard of the fallen at their feet. "...I'm...I'm sorry I couldn't save them all."

"Yes," the Cat continued, eyeing her sharply as the Kitten yawned. "Why don't you explain that for me, while you're at it?"

"I...I didn't know you had...a f-family," she stuttered, still struggling not to lose any further contents from her stomach at the sight of the Kittens' bodies. "I-I would have TRIED to s-save you all...if I'd known…".

Eyes locked with hers, the Cat took a slow, deliberate seat, wrapping its tail around its legs. "...you're a terrible liar."

"...liar…?" She repeated, quietly. "No, I would have! I swear I would have! But I didn't know!"

"You Humans have always known," the Cat continued, licking its paw. "Why should I believe it's any different now?"

Maeva's mouth opened, but she held the words back a moment to assess things from the Cat's point of view. Humans have ALWAYS known? Which Humans? Known what? That a family of Magical Talking Cats lived right here in the house next to the lake? Not in my lifetime…

A light shone behind her eyes.

...what about people like Alba, though? This same Cat had lived with her as well, and look how SHE'D treated them. And what about the person before her? There had probably been countless clashes throughout history between the Humans and the Cats, and seeing how their battles were fought today, it would only make sense that the Cat still not trust her now...

She shook herself awake once more. The Cat was still waiting, ever patiently, for a response.

"...is that why you're haunting this house?" was the best she could come up with.

"Haunting?" the Cat repeated, raising an eyebrow...or at least using the tone a Cat would use if a Cat could raise its eyebrows. "I'm no spirit. I just live here."

"You know, you keep saying that," she huffed back, surprised she still had strength left to argue. "But I live here too! I know Humans are assholes, but you can't just kick me out of my own house with death threats like that!"

"Is it any different than what you've done to us?" There was a flash in the Cat's eye that reminded her it still hadn't explicitly said it WOULDN'T murder her. "We've lived here for many years in spite of it all, and we'll continue to live here, whether or not you'll be joining us."

The queasiness inside her began to evolve into something...hotter. Sharper. Maeva frowned. "Hey, I've been living in this house for fourteen years now, and I never saw hide nor Jekyll of you for any of 'em! You don't just get to be absent for fourteen years, then come back and expect to still own the place like that!"

"I didn't choose to be absent," the Cat replied, coolly. "You Humans sent me away in the sky box. No matter what we do, you always seem to find some new method for getting rid of us, so you can continue taking from us whatever you want to."

Sky box…? Oh, right, the balloon. "...I still don't understand that part. How did you get back?"

"Why should I tell you? You'll find another way to drive me away eventually, won't you?"

Maeva raised a finger to make a point - no, not THAT finger - but hesitated. The Cat didn't seem interested in being rational here. Clearly there were still unresolved emotions over what Alba had done...and maybe that was understandable. Humans WERE assholes...but surely there was still a happy ending solution, right? She just needed to think of a different approach...

But it hurt to think. It hurt bad enough to stand here accused of being an asshole by a condescending magical talking Cat, but whatever blow she'd taken to the head last night felt like injury to insult, and she wasn't sure she had the strength to debate it much longer.

"Listen, Cat…" she said, taking a deep breath to clear away the red fog surrounding her vision. "I just want to live here in peace. I just want to live here in the house I've lived in for all my life without the threat of murder anymore. Can you do that for me?"

The Cat, having taken a moment to nuzzle the sleepy Kitten at its side, slowly turned its eyes back up to her. "...you don't listen well, do you?"

Maeva sighed and blinked with heavy eyes.

"I have just asked the exact same of you," it said, the calm in its voice laced with thorns. "Cats have lived in this land for years. More years than you have been alive. More years than this house has stood. And all we have wanted is to continue living here without intervention by Humans."

Several responses attempted to spill out, but Maeva abandoned them all, struggling to stay on track as her mind protested, begging for rest. It wasn't time to give up yet. Stay awake…

She finally settled on "...I'M not going to kill you, Cat."

"Of course you aren't," it replied, effortlessly. If the Cat had been shaken up by the storm at all, it was extremely good at hiding it. "...especially not when you are so tired and weak."

It raised a paw, running its tongue down the length of its foreleg. "...and vulnerable."

Maeva could feel her heart drumming against her chest, pumping blood as hard as it could to her head, desperately trying to keep her awake despite the overwhelming ache to surrender. She wanted to forget any of this had even happened. The ringing in her ears started to peak again.

"Can't we just...BOTH live here?" she asked, exhausted. "I promise we won't hurt you! We can coexist!"

The Cat narrowed its eyes dismissively. "We already coexist. And Humans have not made kind houseguests. We have lived a coexistence being trapped, enslaved, shipped away and banished...and those are only the lucky ones. Would you coexist with someone who insists these are all merely things from the past that don't matter anymore?"

She couldn't answer. How COULD she answer a question like that? The Cat had a point too strong for her to refute. But...if she didn't TRY to refute it...it would only be a matter of time until the Cat decided to kill her and her family. Her head throbbed.

There had to be another solution. Some kind of a trick. A miracle. There HAD to be some other solution than for one side to triumph by killing the other.

I'd rather the Cat just murder me now than admit Nash was right, Maeva snarked to herself.

Sarcasm seemed to be the only thing keeping her awake now. The world felt like it was melting away, each of her five senses failing one by one as the Cat became the only real thing left. She could feel herself slowly fading out of the picture, nothing more than a simple distraction to life's final boss, the Cat.

Shouldn't have relied on me to be the hero that would save the world, she thought with one last snide grin as she felt her eyes begin to close. But I guess that's just how life works isn't it? I didn't ask to be the hero...that's just how the stage was set when I came into the scene…

The Cat stared back, silent as ever.

...wait.

She forced her eyes back open.

WAIT...

She inhaled slowly.

She exhaled slowly.

She straightened her back, pushed out her chest, and curled her fingers into tight fists. Breath circulated. Blood flowed. The world returned to its normal color.

She licked her lips. She knelt down on one knee. And she matched the Cat's stare once more.

"We don't LIVE in the past anymore, Cat," Maeva said, quietly, but not softly. "We live now. We live here. Everything that's happened in the past has already happened, and there's no way to change any of it. You were gone for fourteen years, and what happened during that time is going to stay happened. All you get to do is react to it now."

The Cat remained silent, Kitten asleep at its feet.

"I know other Humans haven't been kind to you," she continued, all of her focus trained on keeping her breath steady. "What happened to you all those years ago with the...the sky box...that's the world I came into. I wasn't responsible for any of it, but it's what I have to react to now."

She gestured to the dead bodies all around. "All these Kittens...they're all dead. And...maybe I could have saved them, if I'd known they were in danger. But I didn't know that. And I'm sorry I never asked to find out."

She turned back to face the Cat, its eyes still locked on hers. "...but I want to make a promise to you, Cat. I want us to be able to live together."

She leaned in closer. "So, I promise...I'm never going to hurt you as long as I know you're living here."

With a nod, Maeva let the words hang in place as she drew back and awaited the Cat's reply.

The gentle breeze was the silence's only company, sending the occasional leaf scuttling along the ground idly. She dared not speak, nor move, nor hardly even blink. The Cat hadn't moved its head, but she could feel its gaze was pointed off center, no longer directly aimed at hers.

Nearly a full minute passed.

And at last, the Cat turned back to her, and spoke:

"Perhaps...we CAN coexist here."

Maeva didn't dare breathe her sigh of relief just yet.

"But," the Cat added, sitting as haughtily as a cat possibly can, "...give me one reason to believe otherwise, and we'll be right back where we stand now."

She felt her lips pull up at the corners as she bowed her head solemnly. "I'll do my best."

"I'd better not come to expect any less."

And with that, the shuddering aura of darkness surrounding the driveway seemed to finally dissipate. At any minute, it looked like the clouds might part and send a shaft of sunlight down into the rain-soaked grass below, to border the sky with a symbolic rainbow.

Sounds awfully poetic for a minefield full of dead bodies, Maeva couldn't help but add in her head…

She suddenly became aware of something pressing against her leg. Her hand slipped into her jeans pocket, questing to find...oh, right!

"There's one more thing, Cat!" she added, pulling her hand out. "I'd like to give you a gift. Call it a...symbol of friendship, to commemorate our new coexistence together!"

"A gift?" The Cat's head tilted just the slightest bit as Maeva's hand stretched toward it.

"Your Kitten seemed to really like it," she said with a knowing smile. "So I thought you might like it, too."

The Cat cautiously stretched its neck out to smell her hand, keeping an eye on her at all times. She watched as the moment she uncurled her fingers, the Cat's eyes went wide with a very pointed interest.

"Ooohhhh…" the Cat purred as it rubbed its face against the crushed valerian she'd stashed away earlier. "...I like this gift."

"I'm glad," she beamed, still shocked that her last-ditch effort had actually been a good idea in the end. "If you want, I can make a necklace out of it so you can carry it with you wherever you want!"

"Yes," the Cat nodded. "I want this."

From her other pocket she produced the empty locket she'd planned to use and carefully poured a small pile of valerian flakes into the locket's chamber. She hooked it around the Cat's neck and sat back on her heels.

"It's a great look on you!" she said, resisting the urge to make any strange delightful squealing noises.

The Cat admired its new gift for a moment, forgetting for a moment how silly it must have looked to Maeva. Apparently valerian WAS an effective stand-in for catnip after all. Maeva tucked that tidbit of knowledge away for possible future use, gleefully watching the Cat's continued antics.

A moment later, the Cat finally spoke again. "Perhaps I should look for a gift of my own to return your generosity, Human."

"I'd love that," Maeva replied with a weary smile, honestly just glad that her cartoon fantasy had finally paid out appropriately in the end.

"I think I was able to slice a finger off that other human who tried to kill me," the Cat mused, giving her the closest natural expression to a smile that feline anatomy allowed for. "Perhaps you can wear that as a reminder to your fellow Humans what will happen if our coexistence is ever again threatened."

The look on Maeva's face could speculatively be called "the mutated offspring of horrified shock and the desire to be polite in spite of cultural values dissonance". As much as she dreaded the idea of Nash's severed finger hanging just above heart at all times, she dreaded even more the idea of offending the Cat in such a critical, crucial moment in their relationship. She simply gulped loudly and smiled, trusting the Cat to not understand human body language.

"Good," the Cat said with a certain finality, prodding the Kitten awake with one paw. "This is good. We'll be leaving now to see if there were any other Kitten survivors from the storm. Maybe you should search for survivors as well."

She wanted so badly to respond with sarcasm, but she knew better, and puckered her lips instead. "...sure. That sounds like a good, productive idea."

With the Kitten up and walking by its side now, the Cat regarded her a moment longer, then turned and walked away, heading toward the lake.

"I guess I'll see you around, Cat…" she said, vaguely, as she pulled herself back to full height, drug herself back up the porch stairs, and opened the front door, mentally sorting out the story she'd fabricate for anyone who dared to ask her about the shrivelled finger she'd be carrying around her neck when school started up again.

And from just beyond the rim of the grassy slope leading down to the lake, she didn't hear the Cat respond: "Of course you'll see me around...I always come back, don't I?"


	14. Chapter 14: A Lot Has Changed Since You've Been Gone

Dear Alba Bowman,

Before I say anything completely stupid, I guess first off I should say thanks for spilling your guts like that. It couldn't have been easy to dredge up all those bad memories, and I might not have asked you about it at all if I'd realized how much it would hurt to bring it all back up. But then again, just like you, I was a little desperate for a solution, and sometimes people do crazy things when they're desperate.

A lot has changed around here since you've been gone. I mean sure, Mr Chokshi still runs his rental place across the lake, and it's still hard to get a good signal on my phone, but I'm mostly talking about...you know. And I wanna set some things straight about that.

First off, do you even have any idea how many feral cats live in the area here? We're talking like, holy shit, this is a LOT of cats. And yeah, like you said, rescue shelters can't keep up, and they straight-up refuse to accept any more cats because there's just too freakin' many of them. Some people don't even bother with the shelter; they try to capture and tame one for free, but...frankly? People around here are all idiots who don't know how to take care of a feral cat. Seriously, it's specialist work. You can't repel them with plants, you can't even shoot them (and why would you, don't be a sicko!). You can't keep 'em out, you can't keep 'em in, all you can do is try not to drown under a raging river of feral cats.

...but I think I've figured it all out now. Of course I figured it all out myself, I'm fourteen, I think I know everything. (Yeah, sorry for lying about my age before, but, again, you know how it is when you're desperate and all).

There's an old story that gets told around here about a nasty old man who built a house out in the woods and started seeing this cat on his property all the time. He was kind of a dick and kind of a hillbilly and mostly a hermit, so naturally, his answer was to just keep trying to shoot it. No bullet he ever fired could ever hit it, and every day it would be back on his property. What was it doing there? Mocking him? Haunting him? Who knows. But it ended up driving him crazy nonetheless, because this frickin' cat just wouldn't leave him alone. Sounds familiar, huh? Yeah. Apparently your story isn't as unique as you might think.

Your neighbors probably said stuff like "Oh, this land was once considered sacred ground to the local Natives, and we have gone and defiled it with our machines and our electricity and our modern plumbing, and now the land is forever haunted by their vengeful curse upon us," right? They probably tried to blame it all on First Nations voodoo curse magic, something that can be easily explained away but never dealt with. White people sure do love their guilt, n'est-ce pas?

Listen. I'm half Native. My mom's the real deal. I know a curse when I see one, which is never, because curses are all a bunch of bullshit made up by American film writers who are too lazy to come up with a better plot to base their story on. There's no Evil Cat Curse on this place. Just an absolutely ridiculous feral cat problem.

And you wanna know one sure thing I know about cats? Cats are WEIRD.

When there's this many of them out and about, you start feeling like you're always seeing the same one everywhere you turn. "There's no mistaking that fur. Those eyes. That creepy feeling you get in your stomach when you know they're nearby." That's what you tell yourself, because that's what you expect from vengeful spirit cats, right? What a load.

If cats could talk, I know exactly what they'd say. They'd say they're mad at us for always trapping them, hunting them, trying to chase them out of the homes they've been living in for god knows how long now. And to be fair, there ARE just way too frigging many of them. But then again, there's also way too frigging many humans around here too. So we're at a sort of impasse, I think. It's something you gotta learn to coexist with, lest you start hearing voices in your head and thinking cats can talk, or that they want to murder your family or whatever. (HINT: They kinda do. They're cats, I told you they were weird).

Anyway, I've made peace with the cat that killed your husband. So, you know, rest in peace or whatever. And thanks again for the history lesson. I feel like I understand the world a little better after all this.

Good luck in your future hot air balloon travels. :P

Sincerely,  
Maeva Giroux

P.S. You wouldn't happen to have a hot daughter about my age, would you? I could use a nice princess to marry after saving the world. Just a thought. Let me know, k? <3


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